The pond discovers Elvis is alive and well and living in Paul Sheehan ...

So it's on, and with it, a barely endurable five weeks,

The pond has already been astonished by Fran Kelly's breathless announcement on RN this morning that 'this election will be contested in every seat', or similar words, of breathtaking banality ...

Mindful of various requirements of assorted acts, the pond will not be urging anyone to do anything during this fraught season.

In any case, some will think it's just a matter of Brisbane v Manly, or perhaps Collingwood v Carlton, or if you will, and you think it should be a three cornered contest, Mark Rothko v Jackson Pollock v Richard Serra ...

Even commenting on the commentariat will become an odious, tedious task.

But there are bright spots, if bizarre.

For some reason, Generally grumpy Paul Sheehan has decided to distract himself by taking a tilt at the News Corp windmill.

After yesterday's tabloid effort for the Sun-Herald, Murdoch's vicious attacks on Rudd: it's business, he's at it again today in A 21st Century Fox playing chicken.

This time it's Kim Williams in the Sheehan sights, and just as Col Pot's nickname got a run, so do assorted nicknames of the Kim kind:

Kim Williams, the chief executive of the largest media company in Australia, has become widely known within News Corp Australia by a variety of names involving ''Kim'' and ''il''. There is Kim Il-sung, the Supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic, or Kim Jong-il, the dictator's unstable son and successor, or Kim Jong-un, the present leader of North Korea who is just as erratic and autocratic as his grandfather and father - or, my favourite, Kim Il-will.

If nothing else, this makes the pond feel much better about routinely calling Sheehan Chicken Little Generally Grumpy ...

Sheehan takes as his golden tablet this tweet by the great Satan:

Indeed, and sic to the misplaced apostrophe too. No wonder News Corp reptiles are journo bums. 

But really hours of please can be had by perusing the tweets of RM (frolic here):

Yes, that'd be the MySpace News Corp fucked up.

Because weather is climate don't you know, and climate is weather, and hey ho, let's keep that climate science going gung ho at the lizard Oz.

Yes indeedy, because what's wrong with a woman showing her tits so I can make money off them? 

Damned elites, where's Nick Cater when we need him to stand up for tits and bums against the deviant puritans ...

Because, after all, what's wrong with resting and taking spiritual comfort, after giving a damn good lecture at the spiritual home of big tobacco, big mining and climate science denialism? 

Damned rich kids, just like me a pretentious, pompous, deluded, grasping, greedy power monger, and as poor as a powerless church mouse to boot ... So what's new?

And so on and so forth:

Yes, you can see where the reptiles at the lizard Oz get their feed lines from ... PC this, PC that, because the great Satan just loves to muck in ...

But back to Sheehan, who must have pondered a little about where he was heading, because he spends a good deal of time trashing Williams - He married Gough Whitlam's daughter Catherine and has had a long affinity with the Labor party - and eek, look, Kim il has run around with the classical music crowd and the film mob, the indecent filthy pervert ... and then he comes out with this ....

Where the interests of the newspapers and Foxtel have converged is in the company's trenchant opposition to Rudd's national broadband network, a multibillion national infrastructure that is a classic gold-plated, hastily-conceived, poorly-executed, over-budget example of Rudd grandiosity. The network is both an ambitious national infrastructure project and a juicy target - a target the News Corp newspapers have not missed, running hundreds of stories, which have included some very good reporting about the many obvious shortcomings of the network, and some hyperbole.

It makes for poignant reading. You see, Sheehan was supposed to have produced the splendid insight that News Corp had unfairly targeted the NBN's notion of fibre to the home, when everybody knows that copper or wireless will do, even if they won't do, and today he suddenly remembers that he's actually on the same side, that the NBN and its dream of fibre is a gold-plated example of grandiosity.

It's extraordinary, the inability of Sheehan to hold two thoughts in noggin at the same time.

How can he accuse News Corp of hyperbole after coming out with that line?

... a classic gold-plated, hastily-conceived, poorly-executed, over-budget example of Rudd grandiosity.

It's an entirely stupid remark that would be entirely at home at News Corp, allegedly and ostentatiously the subject of his spleen ...

And then he suddenly remembers his thesis, and heads back to the bleeding obvious:

As News Corp has borne down on the NBN, it has borne down on a project which presents a threat to the business model of the Foxtel monopoly. The Coalition is opposed to the NBN in its present form, offering a less costly but less ambitious national broadband strategy which would leave Foxtel, and Telstra's copper-wire network, in a stronger position in the current landscape. 

Uh huh. That's be the classic copper-plated, Victorian era conceived, poorly maintained, expensive and completely useless example of Abbott's ludditism ...

It is argued that Foxtel has nothing to fear from the NBN because the cost of content is expensive, and big media companies have a natural advantage of scale. This is true. But News Corp learned a lesson when it tried to compete with the emerging juggernaut of Facebook by buying MySpace. Instead, it saw new technology overwhelm old advantages. 

Actually it was greed that did in MySpace. At a time when users needed to be cultivated and given a good social experience, they were inundated with advertisements to repay the bizarre bubble price that Murdoch paid for the site (c. $580 million in 2005). Murdoch was always destined to take a bath in an area he doesn't have a clue about ...

Sadly Sheehan can't even tease out the lesson they should have learned ... and simple-mindedly blames it on technology overwhelming old advantages. New technology was the least of it, respecting your users and their experience much more of it ...

But back to Sheehan for a final word:

The problem for News Corp in waging a furious campaign against the NBN, and a campaign against Rudd, is that the company has a long record of blending journalistic campaigns with corporate self-interest.

Yes, but if their corporate self-interest coincides with incisive reporting, is there a problem with them reporting on ...

... a classic gold-plated, hastily-conceived, poorly-executed, over-budget example of Rudd grandiosity?

Truth to tell, the very last person that Fairfax should send in to do battle with News Corp and the Murdochians is the Generally Grumpy Sheehan, because he'd fit right at home with them.

He actually believes in the siren song of the Murdochians, and when he scribbles about the evils of a campaigning News Corp, he's revealed as riddled with contradictions, hypocrisy, and of course the standard amount of News Corp bile and liverish spleen ...

Well it's what passes for entertainment at the pond, and meanwhile the leaden finger of Col Pot can today be seen at work in the Daily Terror.

Except of course that the rabid ferals at the Terror have been producing this sort of hysteria for months:

What a pity that all Fairfax offers as an alternative is the likes of Sheehan ...

And why do you think that Sheehan might have bent a little today?

And started to talk of gold-plating?

Well the reptiles of the lizard Oz seized with glee big Mal's take-down on his blog yesterday, and celebrated with Darren Davidson's NBN piece 'misconceived' (behind the paywall because Murdoch wants you to pay for lies and deception) which concluded thusly:

"There are a lot of conspiracy theories whirling around the internet and most of them find their way on to Twitter. They don't usually find their way into mainstream newspapers," Mr Turnbull wrote. 
 A spokesman for News Corp Australia said the coverage of the NBN in its newspapers was "driven by our mastheads doing their job - scrutinising the expenditure of very large amounts of public money. "Articles in competitor publications that suggest otherwise are complete nonsense, up there with sightings of Elvis. Foxtel faces competition with or without the government's NBN," he said. "Foxtel . . . continues to invest and innovate, and launch new products offering consumers expanded choice and control over what they watch.

The anonymous spokesman's remarks are of course comical - Elvis and all that - and at the same time completely fraudulent, because the coverage of the NBN, much like the coverage of climate science, long ago went beyond the valley of the rabid in News Corp, completely out of control and completely hysterical, and there has been no worse offender than the ostensibly broadsheet Australian, which has been out of control in its campaigning and in its conflation of opinion and news ...

But is Sheehan the one to point this out?

Not really. He does in fact bear a startling resemblance to Elvis Presley ...

Oh yes, it's going to be a long five weeks ...

(Below: a couple of distractions)

A pox on both their houses and their not bloody nice NBN coverage ...

They must be really feeling the pinch at Fairfax.

The pond almost fainted with shock at the sight of Paul "generally grumpy" Sheehan strutting the boards on a Sunday, even featuring on the front page with Rupert v Rudd.

Say what? An actual Sunday piece, with splash, announcing Murdoch's vicious attacks on Rudd: it's business, and noting that Col Pot's arrival down under is more than coincidental?

On one level, it's merely a statement of the bleeding obvious.

Could the Murdochians descend any lower than their vicious, relentless campaign against Julia Gillard?

Probably not, not even with Col Pot lashing the hounds, and driving them yelping forward into the abyss of lickspittle lackydom. Or possibly they can, but the baying might then be too naked, contrived and obvious, and be counter-productive.

On another level, Sheehan's piece is full of the pious, rank hypocrisy of the kind all too often to be found in Sheehan's bile and Fairfax's coverage.

Sheehan contends that News is violently, viciously opposed to the NBN because of the threat it poses to Foxtel, and that's behind its fierce assault on Rudd.

D'oh.

That's always been the agenda behind the Murdochians' behaviour, and it helps explain the shameless quisling copper mentality of the man who invented the internet in Australia, big Mal Turnbull, always ready to roll over for the rich and the luddite copper mentality of Tony "invisible substance" Abbott. Yes big Mal took the bait this morning, and scribbled Murdoch and the NBN - a reality check, and never mind the copper ...

The shameless hypocrisy comes into play when it's noted that the Fairfax rag, the Australian Financial Review, has also conducted a vitriolic campaign against the NBN.

You don't get to learn this by reading Fairfax or Sheehan.

You have to go off to other sources, like It's been a bad week for the anti-NBN brigade, which pinged both the AFR and the reptiles at the lizard Oz for getting things wrong in their campaign.

But that was recent news, it's been going on for a long while, so let's wind back the clock to another Crikey story, in June 2012, with Bernard Keane's AFR's opposition to NBN infects journalism.

Once upon a time you used to be able to distinguish The Australian Financial Review from The Australian because it was only at the latter that its editorial stances infected its journalism; the AFR, for example, is editorially opposed to the NBN, but its coverage was always far more neutral than that to be found in The Oz, which has conducted a mostly fiction-based campaign against it for years. Things however may be changing under the not-so-new régime of Michael Stutchbury. 
On Wednesday, David Ramli produced a piece (page 3, but led off page 1) describing how construction companies were abandoning the NBN because of delays caused by “bungled planning”. This would, Ramli declared, lead to increases in construction costs. He “understood” that two of the three winners of NBN’s first round of construction contracts had declined to participate in the second round of contracts. The two companies were Silcar and Transfield; both were said to have declined to comment because of “contractual obligations”, implying the sinister hand of government had silenced the companies. 
Only, Silcar and Transfield did comment afterward. Transfield, in a remarkably terse 34-word statement, said the story was “incorrect”. The company “already successfully bid for one major work package and remains committed to the project”. Silcar said the same, issuing a statement saying the report was “untrue”: “Silcar has and will tender for specific components of the NBN offered to it and remains 100% committed to the nation building project …” 
What did the AFR do? Yesterday Ramli revisited the issue to couch it in terms of an NBN denial and, while noting the companies had issued “similarly worded statements”, said neither had confirmed they were bidding for contracts. So, a company’s failure to openly declare it is tendering for a contract in competition with other companies is evidence it has walked away in disgust at “bungled planning”. They have some funny ideas about how tender processes work at the AFR.

In fact it was back in April 2012 that the pond itself noted this little bit of front page FUD digital mischief, a 'print the controversy' piece of the most shameless kind.

You could multiply this story over and over again in sundry Fairfax rags - it was one of the chief reasons the pond didn't give a toss when the AFR stopped turning up on the front porch.

Sadly the management and the board didn't get it - that's to say the intertubes - despite being given much advice on how to get it, and there remains a clear, obvious, long-lingering resentment and suspicion of the internet within the organisation, with Fairfax's attempt at TV online one of the more risible efforts to compete.

As for Sheehan? What a joke he is, and what a joke Fairfax is for pretending it's somehow on a more elevated plane than the Murdochians.

Here's the pond's solution, which some might term piracy, but which in these perilous difficult times, the pond has decided is actually better termed civil disobedience.

The way with all the big corporations is that they want to herd the sheep into closed pens - cable, subscriptions, geoblocking, territorial limitations - so they can pluck and fleece the sheep as they will.

It's not just the Murdochians. Apple is a prime example.

So the pond cracked the Apple TV so any sort of file - mkv, avi - can be played along with the mp4s. And it got itself an anonymising VPN. And you can guess the rest, and how sweet it is not to have geoblocking pop up on the screen like a stern maiden aunt. Or like a bad Daily Show joke.

Hey guys, you can get 'roos, and 'rangs and still have John Oliver.

Now the pond has nothing against rewarding owners of intellectual property rights - a roomful of CDs and DVDs testifies to that - but when you get the Murdochians wanting to shut down an open system in their own favour, then between an open and a closed system, the pond will chose the open system ...

Which happens to include no reward for Sheehan scribbling the bleeding obvious, while ignoring the deviants in his own nest ...

As for the Murdochians?

Well hell will freeze over before the pond pays a red cent towards any of the rags, or the cable TV, but they're surely running true to form this Sunday:

As for the NBN? Forget it Jake, it's already been too long, and the pond now has enough speed to go about its business, and that business isn't giving the Murdochians or the Fairfaxians a brass razoo ...

(Below: a Murdochian cartoon? Nope, it was in the AFR, and used to illustrate that 28th June 2012 David Ramli story, NBN contractors log out on Labor. Who needs Col Pot when you can have the AFR?)

A sampling of delusions on a Sunday, by way of cricket, angry Sydney Anglicans and Pellist pagans ...

It's dull days at the angry Sydney Anglicans, as a quick glance at the current front page  will prove - though we can all thank the long absent lord the days of the dark, gloomy proselytising front page are a distant memory, even to pond dwellers who hold a grudge...

Searchers after the bizarre will no doubt be satisfied by Michael Jensen's tortured analogies between cricket and missionaries, indulged in at unseemly length in It's not cricket: an Anglican Theology of Mission.

Not once does Jensen mention the way Sydney Anglicans have supported gay and women's rights bashing fundamentalists in assorted African churches, but then it's no doubt important that theory bear absolutely no relationship to actual practice.

Better to head back to Cranmer, in the sixteenth century, or Dr Grace, or be as modern as Ramsay in 1936, when all the pond needs to do is head back to 2005:

In the face of it, it's an unlikely meeting of minds. The Anglican Church of Uganda and the diocese of Sydney may be part of the Anglican communion which claims 77 million members worldwide but they are, after all, of disparate culture and heritage, and at opposite ends of the world. 
Yet their mutual fidelity to orthodox biblical teachings has placed them at the centre of conservative resistance to the US church's stand on homosexuality and made them leaders of what is now being termed Anglicanism's New Reformation. 
Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi, Anglican primate of Uganda, prefers the word partnership to alliance when speaking of his new friendship with the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen. 
In Australia as a guest of the Sydney diocese, he is so impressed with Moore Theological College, Newtown, he is discussing the possibility of sending postgraduate seminarians for study, as well as conducting joint missions with Sydney parishes in Uganda. (African Anglicans flex their conservative muscle)

Henry Luke Orombi? Gone now, thank the long absent lord, but in his day, ready to plead for the enacting of Uganda's anti-homosexuality law to prevent an "attack on the Bible and the institution of marriage":

The clerics also appealed to all the churches in the country “to remain steadfast in opposing the phenomena of homosexuality, lesbianism and same-sex union”. (Bishops want shelved anti-gay Bill dusted).

Giving Orombi a tour of the college did about as much for gay rights as giving Dr. Bernhard Rust a tour would have done for Jewish rights.

Oh okay here's three shekels for the Godwin's Law swear jar, but it's almost as satisfying as delivering - after the first two tests in England - to Jensen the famous, if mythical, old Edward G. Robinson line, where is your god now?

The other featured item was another Jensenist, Phillip, praying for the election synod.

But as any modern African leader can tell you - just ask Robert Mugabe - there's not much point in prayer, not when you can fix it so the long absent lord isn't needed,  not needed at all. That's how we learn in Sydney Anglicans to choose new archbishop:

“The same principles of glorifying Christ and trusting in him and bringing the Gospel to a needy world is part of the Jensen-Goodhew-Robinson-Loane tradition and at that level you’ll see no real difference (with the election of a new Archbishop)” said Bishop Davies. “So, views on the ordination of women, gay marriage - they are not going to change.” (Sydney Anglicans to choose new Archbishop)

You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house full of angry Sydney Anglicans
You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful gay community or happy feminist collective
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down 
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground 
Into the blue again, after the money's gone 
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground 
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was 
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was

Oh okay, pretty feeble, but still arguably much more interesting than cricket, or the angry Sydney Anglicans determined in their fundamentalist way to be the same as they ever were, and persecute the innocent while relentlessly blathering about the persecution of Christ and Christians ...

How long ago was it that Archbishop Carnley was quoted as saying:

The former Australian primate, Archbishop Peter Carnley, who retired in 2005, criticised "Sydney Anglicans" for "empty moralizing" and questioned if the Bible condemns homosexuality in a statement: The exact meaning to be read from these texts and whether they can rightly be made to provide a neat pre-packaged answer to our contemporary questions is what is at issue. Anybody brave enough to claim to know the inner mind of God on the basis of a personal claim to be privy to the only conceivable interpretation of some biblical texts is guilty of self-delusion. (here)

Let's leave them to their (self) delusions ...

Meanwhile, what joy over at the Pellist conspiracy, for that which has been lost has been found, and the Pellist columns for the Sunday Terror to be restored to their rightful free place outside the News +-> paywall, here.

The downside? Well the columns are unremittingly tedious, and the only pleasure to be found in WYD 2013 in Rio De Janeiro is news of the Pellists indulging in Pagan Rituals:

The Maronites (Lebanese Australians), mostly women, built a soccer field in record time, finishing a day early. The Australian Catholic University students constructed a small, sturdy, brick chapel, where we celebrated the first Mass, with the local Bishop and parish priest, after smashing a suspended bottle of champagne with a hammer to celebrate the opening.

Oh yes, the assorted cults and sects were terribly busy but it reminded the pond that the tradition of busting a bottle of champers, or similar,  over a boat or a chapel goes way, way back:

Bubbly wasn’t always the liquid of choice for christening a boat. The Babylonians sacrificed oxen, the Ottomans sacrificed sheep and the Vikings purportedly offered human sacrifices when it was necessary to appease the Gods of the treacherous north seas. In later centuries the Vikings settled for libations of blood whereas the ancient Greeks sensibly sipped amphorae of wine while dousing their new boats with water. (here)

Pell as Erik the Red ...

But was there any blood? There ought to be blood.

Let's hope they also had a barbecue, with lashings of bright red sauce, to placate the gods ...

And now it wouldn't be a Sunday without a comedy item, and surely this header is a contender: Piece of Jesus' Cross Found? Archaeologists Discover 'Holy Thing' In Balatlar Church in Turkey.

Holy Thing?

You there, Bunter, stop sniggering.

It reminded the pond of the many comical, hoax-laden searches for Noak's Ark, which amazingly enough can now fill a wiki entry to some length, as you can discover here.

The eccentric ways of fundamentalist Christians even manage to hog pages in allegedly respectable journals, as with this 2010 Nat Geo story, Noah's Ark Found in Turkey? You'd expect this sort of tosh in this sort of story at this sort of website, as in Shocking Discovery: Noah's Ark Found!

The superstitions designed to prey on the credulous about the true cross are just as common, and have also earned a lengthy wiki, here, no matter that the yarns have as much credibility and scientific rigour as a Steven Spielberg film about a lost ark.

Naturally it's the Catholics - closet pagans, and public trinket and relic lovers - who've done the most for this sort of superstition, and naturally this sort of story is a shoo-in for the tabloids, with the NYDaily News also giving the story an outing, in Biblical find? Piece of Christ's cross claimed found during Turkey archeology dig.

Holy Thing! But at least the News has the class to link to its very own story, Is that Jesus on this dog's rear end?

Holy cow, or should that be holy dog's rear end, Batman ...

The back flipping little endian is back in town ...

(Above: who is that boof head thug sitting at the back of the bus?)

It is, of course, a key skill in the dark art of politics to be able to turn on a dime.

To argue that white is black, and then triumphantly announce that black is indeed white. To prove conclusively that eating from the big end of the egg is a horror of conspicuous consumption, to celebrate the fiscal responsibility of eating from the small end of the egg, and then to sit down and pronounce delicious the yolk yanked from the big end of the egg ...

And so on and on, everyone knows these tales of political hypocrisy, everyone knows that Tony Abbott is an opportunist of the first water, who has assured the world he might be trusted if he's put a policy in print, but even then it's by no means certain.

And what of poodle Pyne?

Why it's like shooting fish in a barrel, as Crikey did yesterday by quoting from the coalition's most succulent egg yolk talk of Gonski:

Christopher Pyne, May 20: ''I think he [NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell] has been conned. I think NSW has signed up to a very bad deal ... Now that they have the opportunity to see the budget in all its black and whitedness [sic], it's quite clear that the government is cutting education for the next four years." Pyne, May 22: "But if NSW and the three Labor states are the only ones that have signed on we will certainly not be having ... a student resource standard model for four states and a socio-economic status model for the other four states." 
Pyne, July 3: "There is more chaos, and more confusion, from a Labor government that is reeling from constant change and uncertainty." 
Pyne, July 25: "Operating six different bilateral funding models is unworkable for any government in the long term, so we will work with the states and sector over 12 months to come up with a realistic and affordable alternative."

And so on and on, what with everybody now on a unity ticket and the Gonski conski now a Pyneski ...

The hold out states have an angle that gets them out of jail. Offer them a florin, perhaps even two and sixpence, see if you can hold them to one and threepence, and then they can bray about how they were only holding out for a better deal, and now they have one ...

But there's absolutely no excuse for Abbott or for Pyne, who have spent month after month denouncing Gonski.

And what of the commentariat, who valiantly stood in front, beside and behind them? Did they suddenly wake up in the morning and discover that the wasteful, useless, excessive, extravagant model of educational funding had suddenly become a useful policy they could embrace?

Where's Kevin Donnelly when he's needed?

It was left to Justine Ferrari to put the best gloss on it for the reptiles at the lizard Oz, and here's how she did it:

Tony Abbott unveiled his own PNG-style solution yesterday. 
As Kevin Rudd adapted one of the Coalition's policies for dealing with asylum-seekers turning up in boats, the Opposition Leader adopted the same basic position as Labor on school funding in an attempt to checkmate the federal government on the issue. 
Abbott's announcement was about politics, not policy; the school funding reforms were an electoral boon for Labor and the debate had become mired in the money, casting the Coalition as the bad guys withholding dollars from schoolchildren. (Opposition must firm up its funding scheme, behind the paywall because the piece is stupefyingly shallow)

Yes Abbott is only doing a PNG Ruddster to educationj, so that makes it alright then.

But here's the rub. The pond, and the world, has had to endure poodle Pyne smirking, and smugly grinning, and snidely deriding Gonski for many months, and no one told him to stop then, and now no one in the commentariat is putting pepper up his nose, smacking his bottom with a newspaper and telling him sternly to stop it, to go outside, before he drives us all mad with his scratching and his whining ...

Because the commentariat should suffer the same treatment, and perhaps should be made to do it, if not in the dog litter, then certainly on a newspaper out in the laundry ...

When the pond thinks of all the hours wasted, of the reams of digital ink pissed against the intertubes wall (it comes in boxes like paper), it's enough to bring back all those nightmares about destroying the NBN, until the better idea of wrecking it with copper came into tech lunkhead Abbott's peculiarly perverse brain.

Oh yes, here's how you do it, here's how you eat crow, here's how you suck it up, as shown by the editorialist at the lizard Oz:

TonyAbbott's attempt to neutralise education as an issue by committing the Coalition to Labor's funding reforms for four years was smart politics. At its core, the Gonski proposal was fair and sensible. 

Say what? Sensible? Smart politics? It's a fucking pathetic backflip of the worst kind ...

The Opposition Leader also made the right policy call in promising to dismantle the powers of the federal education minister to interfere in the management of individual schools. That has been a major sticking point with several states and also raised concerns in the non-government school sector. (Money can't buy school quality)

And as for that management bit, how dare any secular government insist that creationism has no place in science classes ...

And yet the editorialist continues to toe the old coalition line, that money can't buy school quality, apparently not realising that they've signed up to a unity ticket ...

It's days like these that the pond realises that to ask for consistency and coherence, rather than inchoate cheerleading, is simply too much to ask of the ideologues now installed at the lizard Oz.

Never mind, today you have other choices. There's the pompous Paul Kelly, carrying on his usual way, and Greg Sheridan assuring us all that the PNG solution is a quick political fix, which presumably is completely unlike the quick political fix of Abbott embracing the conski, and then there's iron man Chris Kenny having a go at Abbott for being too timid!

Happily today we can forget Kenny celebrating the backflipper, and chastising him from the iron man right and demanding blood - let there be blood -  in Abbott cautious, consultative and considerate, but intervention still rules (inside the paywall in the same way you need to store radioactive materials in a vitrified glass)

... because today true connoisseurs, true gourmets have a chance to ingest a Nick Cater fix.

Oh it starts in splendid fashion, with the clumsy header UK Labour luminary Maurice Glasman unimpressed by ALP's efforts, as Cater goes about the business of assisting the killer tobacco industry and its lickspittle supporters at the IPA:

Passing legislation designed to make cigarette packets look hideous is not what the Labor Party was put on earth to do, says Maurice Glasman, one of British Labour's leading thinkers. 
Over coffee, on a recent visit to Sydney, he looks at a packet with disdain before asking permission to light up.

No, no, we don't mind if you're a pathetic addicted junkie, hooked on the weed.

Feel free to light up, second thoughts, if you're packing a needle full of heroin, why not just shoot that up, while we sit and watch? Perhaps we could share needles, in much the same way that we'll be sharing your second hand smoke, you wretched self-serving junkie ... you Baron Glasman of Stoke Newington ...

As for the rest, it's completely predictable:

Armed with the results of 3000 face-to-face interviews, Glasman believes he has a handle on what middle Britain really cares about: old-fashioned, human values he feels modern progressives have treated with disdain.

Yes, the old-fashioned human values of being able to puff cigarette smoke in someone else's face, presumably because his puff is precious, being a Labor life peer in the House of Lords. A fucking Lord, lording it over the world ...

Now you might find something of an irony in Glasman and Cater sitting around, sipping on their coffees (let's hope the barista got the flavour just right), denouncing elites:

Trade unions, once the bridge between Labour and the working class, had been captured by the progressive elite they once kept in check.

This from a lordly Lord and a well-paid hack, given the approval of the Murdocracy, the very model of the modern form of Gilbert and Sullivan elites. And predictably having named these nameless elites, it goes from there:

Unfashionably, he sees religious communities as potential allies in the Labour cause. Glasman comes from a Jewish family but works closely with another leading Labour reformer, the Catholic Jon Cruddas. 
"We want to break the idea that we don't have things in common and try to establish areas where we do - wages, work, family and place," he says. "The common good is negotiated. It's not a progressive idea where you begin with the conclusion." 

This is deep Labor thinking? As opposed to gibberish? Why it's not a patch on "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps the end of the beginning, and the beginning of the conclusion which is not a conclusive ending ..." Or whatever it was that Churchill said about the desert campaign.

But speaking of Churchill, surely there's room for a dash of jingoism:

He is not afraid of nationalism - or patriotism, as he prefers to call it. "There is a lot to be proud of about being English, great traditions. We kept liberty alive. Patriotism is just a concern for the country you live in, and the people you live with have a priority. And I'm with that, putting your own people first."

Oh yes, that's deep. In the good old days, it used to be fuck you Jack, I'm okay, I'm a life peer in the Lords ...

Above all, he sees Labour's task as restoring trust in institutions, including government. 
 "There's a massive disconnect; there has been a decline in trust." 

No really, could that be because politicians think its fine to blow second hand smoke into people's faces? Or is it merely because Tony Abbott does more backflips than an Olympic diver?

Now how about you piss on the locals, Glasman, in the proud way traditional English visitors manage in their colonialist offensive way, and have managed these past several centuries?

Unlike other oversees speakers, Glasman has no qualms about buying in to the local political debate. 
I mention the Australian Labor government's proud boast of managing to pass hundreds of pieces of legislation in defiance of a hung parliament. Glasman is unimpressed and comments that Blair and his successor Gordon Brown fell into the same trap. 
 "It's done us no favours. So we need to be less obsessed with legislation and more concerned with the quality and strength of democracy. Legislation in not the be-all and end-all of socialism. It's about relationships, it's about solidarity. It's about honest work."

That's right, piss on Julia Gillard, you stuck-up Lordish junkie Pom, and now why don't you just piss off home, and take that bloody Tony Abbott and Nick Cater with you ...

Get back to negotiating with the far-right English Defence League for a better English future, and halting all immigration and banning the right of free movement of labour, and while you're at it, have another read of Exclusive: the end of Blue Labour as you puff your way down under  ...

Oh dear, the pond is mad as hell today, and buggered if it's going to take it.

Perhaps the mood will pass ... perhaps a coffee will do the trick.

Or maybe just a simple backflip ... and an egg eaten from the little end ...

(Below: yes, we're living in it)

The fog settles in the mind ...

The deep theory behind the pond was that it was a way of avoiding the onrush of senility, the lurking arrival of Alzheimer's ... engage with bright, sparkling minds, and all would be well ...

Patricia Marx explained the theory in The New Yorker in Mentally Fit Workouts at the brain gym (behind the paywall so that's poor people's brains stuffed):

... a study of sxi hundred and seventy-eight elderly nuns analysed essays they'd written in their twenties and found that the sisters who had used the most linguistically complex sentences tended to have the lowest incident of Alzheimer's, which is why I've added this unnecessary subordinate clause even though it's been a long time since I was in my twenties ..

Which is why the pond also indulges in long rambling sentences which seemingly form metaphorical paths without end, dodging here and there through the thickets of the modern media, scrambling to avoid the thorns of the blackberry bushes in the briar patch, and routinely quoting Humpty Dumpty on how much to pay for pretentious arcane words ...

Well that was the theory, or at least the pond thinks it was the theory, because a deep yelllow fog sometimes licks and curls its way around the etherized patient on the table and slides along the window panes of the mind:

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea. (the rest here)

Well we've had the toast and tea, and also a dash of deep brown sugar'd porritch, and it's a measure of the encroaching darkness that the pond has come to realise that the problem lay in the pond's job description.

Read the commentariat and comment on them and the cut and thrust would stimulate the neurons and the senses ...

Bright, sparkling minds? More like doddery nuns being poked and prodded by researchers ...

What to say, for example, about the preening righteousness of Graham 'Gra Gra' Richardson lurking amongst the reptiles at the lizard Oz?

Actually the damage to the Labor brand began long ago, and Mr. Swiss Bank accounts personally led the way ...

Does Richardson think that all is forgiven and forgotten and that now bunkering down with the Murdoch hacks somehow cleanses the soul?

Happily Richardson's wiki, here,  is relatively undiluted and unscrubbed - unlike, say, many wiki entries on the Catholic church -  and it makes for much more amusing reading about a sordid NSW Labor political career than bothering to google to get to his current offering, Labor Party drowning in guilt by association thanks to ICAC finding.

Never mind, the pond did it anyway, to hell with Alzheimer's, just to get to this taste treat, a real XXXX peppermint sensation:

A very senior person at this newspaper put to me yesterday that I and other members of the party should have known what was going on in the parliament and the Health Services Union. 

Stop right there! If the very senior person at that newspaper knew that Richardson should have known about the state of NSW Labor party, why is the wretched rag still publishing him?

Surely this is disgraceful, surely there's a clear case of guilt by association?

Oh forget it, let's get back to the special pleading:

The standard of care inherent in that claim could never be realistically met. I've been associated with Obeid for more than 30 years. We have been friends throughout that period and while I may not have seen him so often in the past decade, we do speak on the phone. 
Yes, therefore I am guilty by association. I did not buy a farm in the Bylong Valley because I had never heard of it until this fiasco turned up on the front pages. I was vaguely aware that he had bought a farm somewhere, but I never visited it and never bothered to find out its location. Why would I? 
I was the person who sponsored Obeid in the NSW upper house. It was more than two decades ago, and he was a successful businessman. The Labor Party just didn't have too many people in that category. 
So there it is! Look no further - I am to blame. The buck stops here.

Oh it's a splendid confession and a defence, and it makes as much of an impression as did a favourite fable when the pond was young:

When Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but rather that a riot was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this party’s blood and its complete failure to deal with NSW infrastructure including but not limited to a second airport, even though I was once a Minister for Transport; see to that yourselves.”

Or some such thing. The fog! The fog of memory loss and the forgetting ...

Do you remember an Inn, 
Gra Gra? 
Do you remember an Inn? 
And the tedding and the spreading 
Of the straw for a bedding, 
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees, 
And the wine that tasted of tar? 
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers 
(Under the vine of the dark verandah)? 
Do you remember an Inn, Gra Gra, 
Do you remember an Inn? (the rest in unmutilated form here)

It turns out of course that Richardson can't remember much of anything, knows not much about anyone, knew only of their good reputation and what excellent chaps they were, and therefore must be singularly useless both as a correspondent and as the insider's insider. This insider doesn't know where the bodies were buried, even worse he didn't know there were bodies that needed to be buried ...

And now, we know you've been waiting for the special pleading, and sure enough here it comes:

I grew up in a household where both my parents were employed by the Amalgamated Postal Workers Union. They would never have taken a dollar to which they were not entitled. In the four decades since my father died thousands of dedicated people worked for trade unions and were scrupulously honest. Sure there were a few crooks, as there always will be because union officials, politicians and company directors are all just human beings. We should not condemn all for the actions of a tiny few no matter how vigilant we may be. Some bad apples will always sneak through.

Do the bad apples include politicians who espoused and followed the rule, Whatever it takes ...?

Whatever it takes ...

The pond could of course go misty-eyed because the pond's father paid his dues for decades to the Amalgamated Postal Workers Union, and in due course died in genteel poverty ...

But that's got nothing to do with anything, and it certainly doesn't excuse recent behaviour by Labor party officials who wouldn't know policy if it bit them on the bum.

Instead there's another tactic at work. It's called spreading the guilt:

Senator Doug Cameron raised an interesting point in an interview he gave yesterday. Cameron queried whether the media would be harassing friends and associates of the five businessmen whom ICAC recommended be charged with gaining a financial advantage by deception. 
Will those friends and associates be asked to "come clean" about what they knew of the tangled web of intrigue and secrecy surrounding the question of who owned what in Cascade Coal and who informed or failed to inform White Energy about those holdings? The answer of course is no, as it would not be reasonable to do so. The question of whether they should remain directors of public companies, while the corruption filing has been made against them, should be taken up with those five men.

Actually it would be perfectly reasonable, in the course of a criminal investigation, to ask friends and associates to come clean and reveal what they know, especially if one of the associates happened to be the wife where a rogue director had parked his assets ...

It's simply bizarre and extraordinary that the notion of guilt should only be taken up with the men alleged to be directly involved.

And then there's more special pleading, in the form of Eric Roozendaal, a plucked rooster in search of a deal, and then a swipe at ICAC:

It is also worth noting ICAC has a particularly poor record for seeing those who go before it finish up in jail, or even charged. Conspiracy is the charge of last resort when there is not enough evidence for a specific complaint. You don't read about many conspiracy trials because directors of public prosecutions are aware of how big a leap is required to satisfy the burden of proof. At ICAC, hearsay is the order of the day. Hearsay cannot be used in a court of law where the rules of evidence prevent it.

Yes, it's all just hearsay ... And now for the ultimate defence ...

Short of appointing an internal affairs bureau to monitor the bank accounts and assets of MPs, no party can guarantee that this will not happen again. A couple of findings of corruption and revelations about a couple of crooks in the union movement do not add up to a culture of corruption.

Says it all really. Just a couple of crooks, and just a couple of others standing around letting it happen ...

The only failure in Gra Gra's piece was to use as a defence the way that misbehaviour  happens on both sides of the aisle. Gra Gra could have led with the indecent, bizarre and remarkable behaviour of NSW Finance minister, which led to his sacking (Greg Pearce sacked from NSW cabinet over conflict of interest).

But perhaps what's most disappointing in Gra Gra's patented "bowl of water" defence is that at no point does he address the betrayal of the rhetoric.

The average Joe and Josephine Blow expects corruption on the right wing side. It goes with the turf, it's the Robert Askin, Joe Bjelke-Petersen thing to do. Deals with property developers, corrupt businessmen, favourable treatment of the Packer family, a casino here, a casino there ...

But the Labor party posed as the light on the hill, with a sacred trust and a sacred duty ...

And in NSW it turned into the party of whatever it takes, and whatever it can take ...

What a shame.

Perhaps there's some advantage to the fog settling in the mind ...

(Below: memory loss part two. Click to enlarge)

After every high comes a low ...

After Dame Slap's epically satisfying rant, the pond feels flat, dull, stale, weary, unprofitable ...

Truly there's only so many gift horses that come anyone's way in a lifetime, and the image of a harridan snapping at an innocent questioner "here no bloody Bronte village, no bloody Bronte village here" will long linger in the mind as a treasured memory.

Oh sure, there are triers out there, but they're not yet stayers.

Poor Nicolle Flint has a go at stirring the pot today, but Misogyny lurks in Winton's world of fiction, is a pitiful, pitiable effort, not really worth a Fairfax hit so early in the month.

Thanks to a vigilant reader, the pond was made aware of the flinty Flint back in the day when she was furiously scribbling Breaking the sheep's back with political correctness, which inter alia, while celebrating Nick Cater's astuteness - yes, yes, breaking the sheep's back with political stupidity - she would come out with bon mots like this:

Postmaterialists found their professional homes in academia, bureaucracy and media, and their common causes in feminism, gay and lesbian rights, human rights, environmentalism and animal activism, rather than business, science and economics. 
Australia has recently been beholden to their power. Witness the Greens partnership with Labor, and a Labor government seemingly more concerned with social and environmental issues than balancing the books. Feminists and bureaucrats keep reminding us how bad things are for women, the human rights industry how bad things are for minorities, and environmentalists and animal activists how destructive and cruel we are, too.

Uh huh. Perhaps more dull, predictable, caricatured, stereotypical, Murdochbot, leaden - than bon - mots, and never mind that it's The Age that played host to the Cater worship.

But it brings us back to the Flint piece about Winton, which sure enough, spends its time reminding us how bad things are for women in Winton's novels.

Why and to what end?

Well it turns out that Flint, in the usual way, wants to have it both ways. So she provides a perfectly conventional explanation:

On one level Winton's women might be construed as literary devices enabling the stories of his slightly bewildered, emotionally repressed Aussie blokes to unfold. Accordingly, women should be no more insulted at their convenient and repetitive use than Aussie men with a flair for trades, fishing, surfing and 1970s-style emotional issues. 

Well yes, he's writing novels, frequently about boofheads, which amazingly involves literary devices and an assortment of characters which no doubt reflect aspects of the author's own life.

Or I suppose you could write this:

It is Eva, I suggest, who provides the potential for reconfiguring white surfing masculinities, but whose over-determined masculinization and often misogynistic representation within the patriarchal logic that structures the work, hinder attempts to realize this potential. This attempt is further restricted by the text's erasure of indigenous people from the landscape. (found here)

Now the pond is frequently accused of heresy when acknowledging not much interest in Winton or his world - why worry if you've lived in Tamworth, centre of the known universe - but thinks even less of Flint, because it turns out that she's an idle game-player, a club-maker, and so she reveals her real purpose:

On another, these female characters appear stereotypical. They ''bother''. What remains most remarkable about Tim Winton's writing, in the context of ongoing allegations of sexism and misogyny, is that the literary left leaves the handiwork of one of our most revered cultural icons unexamined. ''Sometimes,'' as Bob Dylan once sang, ''the silence can be like thunder.'' 

Yep, one day feminists are reminding us how bad things are for women, and the next day Flint is reminding us how bad things are for women, and how feminists and leftists are not reminding us how bad things are for women ... How reflexive, or is that up yourself, can you get?

Yep, sometimes the hypocritical contradictory bleating can sound just like a sparrow's fart, especially when once again the club is trotted out to give the "literary left" a clubbing, while Cater is given a joyous toasting ...

But there's your trouble in a nutshell. Flint is a lightweight, a trainee, a novice in the commentariat art, and she has a long way to go.

She really needs to work out whether she dislikes feminism, or whether her idea of feminism is simply a mechanism, a device to give feminists a good bashing ...

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
 I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Yes, it's the business of art to "bother", and now that Winton has managed to "bother" Flint, the pond is suddenly interested anew in his work. But then what does she make of the "bother" and the sexism in vampire tales ...? Could the pond suddenly get interested in feminist vampirism?

Oh it's a dull old road ...

Even the lizard Oz is dull today, producing a kind of wan lassitude.

Oh sure, there's good old Dennis "the suit and tie" Shanahan lathering himself about the NSW corruption scandal - it's amazing he still hasn't managed to work out, much like Tony Abbott and Co. the difference between state and federal spheres - and then there's Greg "hang 'em high and hang 'em hard" strutting the street with his deputy sheriff's badge (personally signed on the reverse by John Howard);

Yes, being a total prick is always ethically just and in The Australian's ratbag fundamentalism policy terms, always necessary.

And there was Niki Savva having a panic attack:

She's really worried, as you can read in Easy ride for celebrity nerd teflon Kev if you can be bothered to google around the paywall, a real Chicken Little routine. It seems the current Chairman is getting away with it, no one's holding him to account, the Bolter couldn't lay a glove on him, the media is failing, the combined efforts of the Murdochians are flailing and failing, and it's doom, doom, doom:

Politicians, policy gurus and political junkies have watched Rudd's success with a mixture of awe, admiration and disgust, wondering if or when it will collapse. 
This from a former senior bureaucrat, highly respected for policy rigour: "No one is following up or checking whether the reality matches the rhetoric. Or if someone does, no one is listening. But this may be a more fundamental and enduring shift in the political landscape -- if so, poor fella my country!"

Indeed. Every so often the pond wakes up in the morning wondering why the Murdochians never bother to enquire whether the reality matches the Tony Abbott rhetoric, and concludes poor fella my newspapers ...

Eventually Savva gets around to it, in her very last par:

Ultimately not all the credit for Rudd Reflux belongs to the media or to hisselfie. The opposition deserves some for fluffing its initial responses to the PNG Solution and meandering hopelessly on Gonski. If it mucks up its handling of Bowen's statement and its own economic policy, it's pretty much over. Three strikes will count the opposition out and Kevin in.

Yes, it's still got nothing to do with actual policies or rigour, it's just whether your team gets up, but in this case, as a reader once sagely noted, currently it's like watching Brisbane play Manly, or, if you happen to live in more civilised climes, your preferred set of drug cheats playing Collingwood ...

But it wasn't enough. It still felt stale and weary, as a been there and done all that mood took hold of the pond, an existential inertia.

Even Paul "generally grumpy" Sheehan was down beat. The poor lad, traumatised by the need to churn out two columns a week, turned in some filler:

Well it sounds impressive, but it turns out that in We'll have a giggle when it comes to monkeys, gorillas and persons of interest, definitively not worth wasting a Fairfax hit, all Sheehan has done is assemble a pathetic, tawdry list of police slang, so ancient that the pond was transported back to the world of Raymond Chandler in a trice. Sample:

Piece: Handgun. 
Heat: Gun. 
Hardware: Gun. 
Hammer: High-calibre gun. 

What? Someone forgot to pack the gat? The roscoe's missing? The 9 isn't to hand? The chopper's toast?  The pocket rocket isn't a penis? The burner's a bust? The heater's now called heat?

And so on and on, with a special wink at closet days slang for a closer, as old as the moth-eaten fur coat in the pond's TG friend's wardrobe.

Oh what to do, what to do.

How about some street theatre? A little direct action? Like in the old days ...

Right, be warned, if you stumble past a harridan outside the Newtown railway station today, and ask for directions, be assured you'll have your head snapped off, with the harridan shouting "there is no bloody Newtown village here, stop all this talk of villages, just bugger off, what we need is a mall and a Coles and a Woollies and a Macdonalds."

Get thee gone Camus, and take trainee Flint and old school Dame Slap with you ... the pond needs, nay demands, top notch commentariat ranting on a daily basis ...

It's the only way to say Begone Dull Care ...

(Below: sheesh, a couple of New Yorker cartoons as filler)

The pond proudly presents a classic commentariat rant ...

(Above: please spend wisely and check the 1912 fine print here)


The pond is always on the quest for the perfect commentariat rant, and truth to tell, it's been slim pickings of late.

Your classic commentariat rant should always purport to be a rational, sane contribution to policy debates and discussions, but just simmering beneath the surface, there should be a stew of completely irrational hysteria and hate, decorated with lashings of abuse, over-heated rage, fear, loathing, froth and foam, preferably with a dash of paranoia.

One of the classic ways of achieving this is to lump together all sorts of disparate issues, unlinked except in the ranter's mind, as the ranger proceeds to link them together and blame them on "the other",  the different, and anyone who dares to see things slightly differently.

A sure guide to a classic rant is the header.

Now if it's a desiccated Henry Ergas header, or a pompous fly-blown Paul Kelly header - today's example is High-stakes test for the nation - you're entitled to immediately nod off and indulge in a quick cat nap.

No, what's needed for a classic spray is something feisty, like You're all a bunch of fucking idiots. Yes, you!

Of course for the MSM, the fucking is a tad tricky, so Janet "Dame Slap" Albrechtsen settles for next best with Leftist jargon is village idiocy (behind the paywall to keep you on an even keel), and never mind if that offends your average village idiot, because everyone knows there's no problem offending retards, losers, dropkicks and the handicapped if it's all in a good cause. Anything else would be terribly PC, and as we all know, all youse PC types can just get fucked ...

Anyhoo, it turns out that there's nothing more certain to irritate an Eastern suburbs type than people standing in the way of progress, and lordy lordy, is Dame Slap mad as hell:

Around where I live, there has been a recent campaign to "Save Bronte Village." I've lived here for more than 20 years and I've never heard the old set of shops up the road from me be referred to as a village. It's just your regular strip of shops. 

Now stop right there.

In its day, back in the twentieth century, when the pond was more high-falutin' and up market, a regular swish and a swell, it had several friends who lived in Bronte, and they referred to it as a village. Most areas the pond has lived in Sydney considers itself a village, though there's really no more pitiful village than Kirribilli.

In fact, Sydney has long thought of itself as an aggregation of villages, partly because of the difficulties of getting around, which sees people stick to their own tribal villages. A bit like those hapless Melburnians who get the fear of dragons when they cross the Yarra.

The pond knows of eastern suburbs types who get the shakes if they head further west than Surry Hills, and frankly the pond can get nose bleed shifting from Newtown to Erko village, and their valiant campaign to cut a supermarket down to size.

But if you're determined on a rant, talk of ethnography or geography or sociology isn't the main game. It's the rant:

...a small group of locals started calling it "Bronte Village" as a ploy to stop a large fruit and vegetable shop opening. We might call it progress. Nothing radical, just a new, bigger shop that sells stuff we need, like fresh fruit and vegetables. The activists call it destroying a village. 
You have to hand it to this group of malcontents. They know how to steal a word, make it their own, and then flog it to stop progress. The other day a woman from outside the suburb asked me for directions to "Bronte Village." I told her there is no village here, just a set of shops up the road. Nonplussed she walked on in search of a village.

Now who are these malcontent, ne'er do well, activist ratbag leftist idiots?

Well it turns out that they include the hyphenated Bruce Notley-Smith, the Liberal party member for Coogee, who dared to attend a "Save Bronte Village" Rally:

...I joined in the rally to protect this special part of Bronte from becoming a victim of overdevelopment and ensure that local residents have their voice heard by the developers and Waverley Council. 
It was great to see so many turn out on Saturday in support of their community. I look forward to closely following the steps in this process to ensure the future of Bronte Village remains in the hands of the community.

It confirmed everything the pond feared about lickspittle village idiot Liberal party stooges, always ready to pretend they cared abut the community.

Oh for Dame Slap to bite off his head with a sharp snap, nonplussing this wretch by reminding him there's no such thing as society, just a bunch of buildings ...

Never mind, back to the rant, because you see once you've lumped everybody into the wash - no you shouldn't mix socks and shirts and hyphenated Liberals with radicals - you're ready to embark on the full-blooded part of the rant, but first you need a name to outrage you, one that is as shocking as the concept of villages:

This is what the Left does best. Find some sweet-sounding words, repackage them as a beguiling catch-cry for a campaign, and you're on your way. Soon enough careers and industries are built around a few words - words like "social inclusion" - even though no one knows what the words mean. But when your currency is emotion, logic takes a back seat. That's why words matter more for those on the Left. By contrast, those on the other side of politics focus more on tedious matters such as outcomes and empirical evidence.

Yes, damn you, state leftist progressive village idiot state Liberal MPs, where's your tedious focus on outcomes and empirical evidence. But what to call you and your lickspittle talk of community? (You dangerous radical ratbag, how dare you talk of amenity and village character, wash out your mouth)

Think I'm being too tough on so-called progressives? Start with the misappropriation of that word. Progressive. For decades, so-called progressives championed symbolic, feel-good politics for indigenous people. They talked of treaties and cultural identity, collective land ownership, "rights" agendas, the need for more hand-outs. This was the "progressive" agenda, they told us. And don't dare mention other words like "assimilation". That's the other tactic. Find a word and demonise it, to demonise your opponents. 
Assimilation became a dirty word and along with it the notion that indigenous people aspire to what non-indigenous people want - a home, a job, a life based on individual desires rather than collective agendas. After 30 years, there was nothing remotely progressive about the outcomes; the so-called progressive agenda entrenched misery in indigenous communities.

There you go, that's how it's done. You've moved from a state Liberal MP chatting about Bronte village to progressives to indigenous issues, and next thing you know Dame Slap is lining up beside the rough Brough to arrange an invasion of the Northern Territory, with bonus control of indigenous spending by government. And the way these assorted policies flamed out in a spectacular way is all the fault of  progressives ....

By now surely you're catching the art of the rant.

Don't hold back, don't consider subtleties and nuance, lump all you hate into a basket and bash away, casting sweeping nasturtiums:

Facing the facts, many on the Left now accept that welfare dependency and rights agendas won't deliver a better life, but it's easy to forget how long unorthodox ideas - such as getting people off welfare - were treated with contempt.

Yes, because progressives everywhere know that living on cat food to eke out your welfare payment to the end of the week, is a life of unadulterated luxury, and working on the check outs so you can afford to buy a better brand of cat food shouldn't be treated with contempt, not as you ponce around Bronte village, telling the natives they've never had it so good, thanks to a mall coming into a retail wilderness to give them the very best competitive range of cat foods to choose from. Because we all need choice ...

Oops, you can see how meaningless ranting is so appealing and catching.

And naturally, once you're on a roll, the foam-flecked spittle is spraying into the air, you're ready to move on to other issues, and naturally that's how the ABC is ruining the nation, and how awful it is to talk about compassion:

As for the Left's lingua franca about asylum-seekers, the trick is to claim sole moral ownership of the word "compassion." If you reject their policies of open borders, onshore processing and no detention centres, then, ergo, you lack compassion. You are not entitled to use that word. Worse, you are nasty, fearful, intolerant and, of course, xenophobic. The Greens and many within the Labor Party are members of this compassion con. And so are many within our national broadcaster. Just a few recent examples: earlier this month, after yet more asylum-seekers - including a baby - died at sea, ABC News Radio ran an online survey asking listeners whether they supported (a) a tougher line (b) a more compassionate approach; or (c) the existing policy. More akin to push polling, note the sly use of "compassion" as if only an easing of border policy can deliver compassionate outcomes. The results surely disappointed the ABC compassionistas: 70 per cent of respondents wanted tougher measures. 

Ah, the wretched ABC. But note the sly use of the word "compassionistas", which it has to be said, is right up there with fashionistas and warmistas ... so clever, this tasty reductionist sauce ...

So now you've reduced your enemy to a word, a nasty, fearful, intolerant and of course xenophobic word, you can maintain the heat on the ABC:

The compassion con has been one of the greatest frauds perpetuated on this nation. When Barrie Cassidy - host of ABC1's Insiders - recently interviewed Immigration Minister Tony Burke about the so-called "PNG Solution," he said "Where is the compassion in the new policy?" 

Yes indeed. Likely after this you'll want a test to root out, weed out, these useless sentimental folk and their pathetic addiction to compassion. Here's the go. Challenge anyone carrying on like a bleeding heart to leave their youngest child out in the snow overnight. If finding snow is an issue, challenge them to put the child in a chaff bag and throw it out to sea, in approved Alan Jones style. Set the example yourself, just to show how it's done ...

The next step of course is to celebrate John Howard's tough policies and excoriate the Labour party. But the pond doesn't do spoilers - well not too many - so let's cut to the chase and the righteous triumphalism:

Once again, so-called progressives have been forced to face the facts, but for too long they relied on the "compassion" word to win arguments. If the Left's use of sweet sounding words was harmless, we might forgive them as irrelevant Utopian dreamers. Sadly, the Left's emotional catch-phrases have led to disastrous consequences - and that's why exposing their hypocrisy is critical.

Uh huh. Now remember, you've got to here by starting off with talk of a Bronte village, featuring a state Liberal MP. It takes a particular skill to berate anyone interested in a "fair go" as rabid ratbag delusionistas. But that's Dame Slap at her finest:

There are plenty of other examples. Words like "social inclusion," "social justice", "human rights" are used to claim the high moral ground, often delivering nothing very moral at all. The Left will mould the phrase "human rights" to include every fashionable agenda - but try asking them to defend the basic human right to free speech, and they slink away, finding excuses or other "rights" that matter more to them. When you trade in emotion, not reason, philosophical consistency is not required. 

Yes fuck all this talk about a fair go, or human rights or other nebulous airy fairy chatter.

Okay, if you've hung in this far,  you'll realise that trading in emotion is entirely the point, and reason and philosophical consistency aren't required, at least not in Dame Slap's world.

If they were, she might have instead spent her column bemoaning the fate of whistleblower Bradley Manning, or hailing Edward Snowden for revealing the extent of government spying, or urging a vote for Julian Assange as a way of sticking it to people who attack Wikileaks libertarian activities ... but naturally she's not really interested in free speech, not when it comes to maintaining a decent security apparatus. In that context, defending the basic human right to free speech, and the right of whistleblowers to bring information to the attention of the world at large would be a bridge too far ...

By this point, you'll possibly also realise you're actually listening to the empty braying of a rabid ideologue, doing a pot and kettle routine, and with a deft change of a few words, the rhetoric is interchangeable:

The Right will mould the phrase "human rights" to include every fashionable right-wing agenda - but try asking them to defend the basic human right to free speech, and they slink away, finding excuses or other "rights" that matter more to them. When you trade in emotion, not reason, philosophical consistency is not required

Okay, if you've hung in this far, you'll be demanding a light tough, a comedy moment, to wrap it all up. So you've done indigenous and you've done refugees and you've done progressives and you've done Bronte village and state Liberal MPs. What else?

Why Queen Liz and the monarchy natch.

Take the focus on the royal family. Last week, following the birth of a new prince to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the usual smug, mocking overtures emerged from people like Jon Faine - host of local ABC radio in Melbourne - about the antiquated monarchy. Yet, I'm willing to bet the same people who would happily mow down that bit of our heritage would be keen members of the "Save Bronte Village" campaign. Save a village that doesn't exist but scrap the centuries-old monarchy, in the name of, well, progress. Go figure.

What a perfect conflation. Bronte village and the centuries-old monarchy.

Truly you couldn't invent this sort of splenetic caper - oh okay maybe David Flint could - but at least you can understand why there are so many servile confused lickspittle Australian monarchists out there.

It seems that Prince Chuck is part of our cultural heritage.

Ah well, it's going to be a hard rain that'll fall when Dame Slap gets around to discovering the environmental, greenie, progressive bees buzzing around in Chuckie's bonnet ...

Meanwhile, please allow the pond to award Dame Slap the prize for the rant of the week, high in the competition for rant of the month, and possibly rant of the year ... and all thanks to a state Liberal MP  prattling about Bronte village ...

(Below: now remember, be firm, be very, very firm. And remember, if any innocent approaches you asking for directions, bite their bloody heads off, and leave them confused and non-plussed. It's a way of showing your very own brand of compassion and care).

(Below: by request)