Time to re-heat the defensive stew one more time ...

(Above: there are currently only two reasons for visiting Fairfax, David Rowe and David Pope - you can find more Rowe here, and surely this summer snap of the poodle Pyne and his masters frolicking at the beach is a sufficient lure. The pond does its best to promote them both and give the Fairfaxians more hits, but is this a business strategy?)

So on the matter of Fairfax, Crikey has chimed in again, attempting to decipher the runes and read the tea leaves of the Fairfaxian decision to join in questioning climate science, as you can read, if you can get behind the paywall, in Cathy Alexander's Climate sceptics crow as Fairfax starts questioning the science.

So here's the result of Fairfax's brave foray into loonery, per Alexander:

Follow that first link in the screen cap, and you end up here:

And so on. According to the Crikey piece, it can either be construed as click bait, or a noble summer season attempt to continue the Gerard Henderson/Miranda the Devine tradition.

But Henderson was always discreet in his denialism - aware he didn't have the expertise to get into a science slugging match - and who on earth within the cardigan wearer contingent thinks Miranda the Devine is the way forward providing an alternative to the Murdochian elite that control much of Australia's print media?

The Fairfaxians are heading downhill fast, because they'll never match the Murdochian elite while at the same time, they're pushing their readership to head off to their digital rivals, such as The Graudian, to cop pieces like Alex White's Should Australian newspapers publish climate change denialist opinion pieces?

Meanwhile, the march towards group think continues, and the latest evidence is what the pond can only call a welter of Wiltshires.

Here's the deadly whirring, whirling digital splash of doom at the top of the lizard Oz:

Yes, Kenneth Wiltshire, aka """", is on a charm offensive, aware that he's hitched to Kevin Donnelly in a farcical duet up there with Laurel and Hardy, and someone has to play the Hardy role. If they were a threesome, you'd have to think Wiltshire would be eyeing off Moe's role in the Three Stooges.

Speaking of stooges, if you can be bothered to get around the paywall by googling Strong national curriculum ensures bright future, you'll be astonished by the bright-eyed cheery optimism being spread through the land:

This review has received no riding instructions from the minister or anyone in the government. The work of the reviewers will be guided by the key words in the terms of reference such as "independent", "robust" and "balanced".

Uh huh. Which makes it even more passing strange that we already know the results of the review, since Wiltshire has advised the world that the current national curriculum is a failure, and Donnelly has explained in Judaic Christian apocalyptic terminology exactly why this is so and what must be done about it...

In this context, while Wiltshire attempts to apply balm on the sunburnt skin and spread oil on the troubled waters, these words jangle:

Most important of all, the review is keen to discern what values, principles, and foundations have been adopted as a basis for the design of the current national curriculum and the determination of its content, especially to meet the key criteria of robustness and balance. The focus of analysis will also be on the extent to which the curriculum is accessible and understandable to all, and embraces the needs of the socially disadvantaged.

Uh huh, talk about a classic bit of educationist gobbledegook. But isn't all that pesky stuff about the blacks the real problem? There's the socially disadvantaged and then there's the outcasts ...

Perhaps it's dawning on Wiltshire that he's in a lose-lose situation and his conservatism has set him up as a patsy and a fall-guy, because already he's calling for a bowl of water and washing his paws in public:

Perhaps we should also recognise at the outset there will never be perfect agreement on the content and delivery of any school curriculum, but one that seeks to be based on shared values is the goal. It is important for critics to remember that this is a review, and not a rewrite of the curriculum. The reviewers have no implementation brief. 
Recommendations will go to the minister, who will no doubt consult widely on them, particularly with the states and territories. The debate on the recommendations will naturally wend its way into parliament and the media.

You see? Nothing to see here, move along folks, don't blame me, blame the Minister, and make sure you consult ... which is perhaps just as well because Wiltshire is just a pawn and already poodle Pyne is making new moves, at least if you can believe the reptiles and their latest brave EXCLUSIVE:

Now there's a wending way ...

Meanwhile over at the Fairfaxian "we're just two peas in a Murdochian pod" rag, the Gina Rineharts were running yet another welter of Wiltshires:

Perhaps the Fairfaxians were a little sensitive about it - naked apologetics wot wot, after their recent forays into denialism - because  at the time the pond visited,  the Wiltshire piece copped only a bare one line on the front page of the politics comment section, about as prominent as the coverage of the Greens calling for the scrapping of prayers in parliament.

If you can be bothered to click on Critics of school curriculum review too quick to perceive a threat instead of potential way forward, you'll discover Wiltshire serving up more defensive, re-heated stew.

Can a stew be defensive, you ask? 

Of course it can, just as it can be re-heated endlessly and never mind the presence of dangerous bacteria, including staphyloccocus repetitious and staphyloccocus defiantus defensivinuss:

There have been no instructions given to the reviewers for the way this latest exercise is to be conducted, just terms of reference that stress the need for an independent, balanced and robust curriculum. 
These key words will guide the review process itself. 
Critics of the planned review fail to realise that this is a review, not a rewrite of the curriculum. As a result, recommendations will go to the minister, who will then consult with key stakeholders, including particularly the states and territories. 
It is crucial to understand that this review is not about education funding or the myriad other education matters that seem to dominate the media these days. 
It may give some comfort to the critics to know that the methodology being developed will be comprehensive and objective. This will include a call for submissions from all citizens, consultations with all key stakeholders including state and territory curriculum authorities, independent and Catholic sectors, principals, teachers and parents. Results of key curriculum research will be garnered. Experts will be appointed for each subject area to evaluate those components of the curriculum. 
International comparisons will figure largely in the work, especially with member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation who have achieved high levels of education outcomes for their students. A similar curriculum review carried out in Britain recently will be examined for key lessons.

What, they're going to call on damned furriners and even worse the Brits, led by Michael Gove, an object of derision and misery to millions?

Can't they just read the intertubes and save eveyone's time and effort? You know, like Top UK headteacher: Michael Gove is 'pressing the rewind button' and Michael Gove's new GCSE exams leave pupils without a second chance.

Indeed The Graudian has a whole page dedicated to the follies of Michael Gove and you can click on it here. And don't forget to sample your bonus Steve Bell:

Never mind, back to the Wiltshire, which in its way is an exemplary example of yadda yadda blather about how things will only get better and better:

Many commentators have observed that these elements are not particularly transparent in the current documentation. 
Considerable criticism has also been made of the complex language that has been used, making it extremely difficult for parents and families to understand what is expected of students and teachers. 
In other words, this review will be a professional one that should be of benefit to students, teachers, principals and curriculum authorities themselves.

Which is a really kindly way, when you think about it for a nanosecond, of saying that the current national curriculum is just too complex and Nick Cater can't understand it, and so we just want to dumb it down and use simple words so the likes of Nick Cater can try to get a grip on it ...

Let's not have any talk of pedagogy, not when we can talk of book learnin' ...

Meanwhile, there's a  couple of elephants in the room which poor old hapless Wiltshire can't talk about - most obviously the naked political intent of poodle Pyne and the equally naked theological and ideological intent of his partner Kevin Donnelly.

So he spends his time rounding up sundry wagons of support and dismissing the critics and feigning surprise and hurt at the personal attacks:

The personal attacks on the reviewers appear to be based on superficial research that has missed the combined expertise - domestic and international - of the reviewers, in curriculum policy, design, analysis, evaluation, benchmarking and implementation. For example, the review of the Queensland curriculum that I chaired for the Goss Labor government was in many ways identical to the recently announced project for the federal government. 

Sssh, don't mention Kevin.

But the capper? Surely it has to be this one:

Too often, a review of government policy is seen as a threat rather than as a welcome source of independent feedback and encouragement.

Encouragement? Is it encouraging to discover that Kenneth Wiltshire doesn't seem to have read or heard of the kind of encouragement already on offer from his partner?

We already know exactly what his conclusions and findings are, thanks to Donnelly's piece for the Fairfaxians on Tuesday, Coalition's call to review school curriculum based on sound reasons.

It's all there - import rote learning from Singapore and Hong Kong, ditch the indigenous malarky, pump up the Western civilisation values, did we mention the Judaic-Christian heritage or have we done that to death over the years?, increase the automatic memorisation and rote learning, structure things so that schools can run like decent military academies, did we mention Judaic Christian values?, and if there's time, click our heels thrice and head back to Tamworth and the 1950s ...

And that is ultimately the point, and why there were sundry educators who dared to point to the flash ideological clothes that Donnelly is flaunting even now:

An open letter to the education minister, Christopher Pyne, signed by 176 educators, has noted that the two panellists were highly critical of the national curriculum and questioned whether they would “hold the requisite openness to diverse views and perspectives required to produce a balanced and fair review”.  (School curriculum review panellist Kevin Donnelly hits back at critics)

Wiltshire seems to have belatedly realised that the review is already heavily politicised, and Donnelly's past is dragging him into the wars (School review panellist Kevin Donnelly linked to tobacco giant).

Hence the bland assurances, the gobbledegook - speaking soothing, pacifying education speak to the educators and parents - and the charm offensive saying exactly the same thing in slightly different ways in the government's two main media outlets.

Sadly, it's too late for a few placatory words in those peas in a pod outlets, Fairfax, doing its best for Gina, and News, doing its best for Chairman Rupert ...

Let the new culture wars begin, and forget those hapless pawns, the teachers and the students ... may the ones with the sharpest wiltshire stainless steel blades win ...

And now to return to our opening theme, the pond has been on tiptoes these last few days, hushing and shushing people whining and moaning about the heat. Sssh, the pond says, whatever you do, don't mention climate change. It only gets people agitated and upset.

You can only mention climate events when they're funny, like people getting trapped in the ice in the Antarctic. You can never, ever make a joke about record heat waves, it's deemed to be outrageous and provocative.

Wouldn't you know it, David Pope refused to listen. Why it's likely he hasn't even heard that his home has turned into  an outlet for the denialists, which is why it's a relief that you can still cop more Popery here. Give him a click. It's not much of a business plan, but it seems it's the best one the Fairfaxians still have going ...

Of course the pond is shocked, believe it if you can believe Maurice Newman ...

Talk about wildly excited.

No, not the news that Maurice Newman, aka """, believes in climate science ...

See that gold bar, that sign you have to pay if you want to access the rotating digital splash of doom at the top of the lizard Oz page ...

Well the pond slid through, like it was greased with KY jelly, and didn't have to pay a dime or even google to get around the paywall ...

What fun, but at least we now know what Newman is really worth.

Of course the actual read was beyond tedious.

Right at the get go, Newman managed the obvious. His favourite routine is to berate people for turning science into a religion, and then he comes out with Readers may be shocked to hear I believe in climate change.

Damn right, belief has got nothing to do with it. He might accept the findings or the conclusions of current climate science, and in due course if there are alternate findings, he might accept or disagree with them. What joy if it turned out the world was flat, the moon made of green cheese and climate science a passing figment of the imagination.

Belief is best left to those who want to practise cannibalism in their local church on Sunday, munching on human flesh and swallowing a little human blood. That takes oodles of belief and diddly squat by way of science.

Things don't get any better when you get to the opening meat on offer in Newman's Mother Nature suggests the party's over for IPCC.

Given the low-grade attacks on me following my piece "Crowds go cold on climate cost" (The Australian, Dec 31) readers of Fairfax publications and The Guardian may be shocked to hear I believe in climate change. I also accept carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. The trouble is, I cannot reconcile the claims of dangerous human CO2 emissions with the observed record. 
I admit it. I am not a climate scientist. That said, I have closely followed this debate for more than two decades, having been seasoned originally by the global cooling certainty of the 1970s.

Oh sure, it takes an admirable cheek and chutzpah to say you don't have the first clue about something, are completely unqualified, and then proceed to vent your ignorant, uninformed opinions to the world, or perhaps more bizarrely, given that the forum is the reptiles of the lizard Oz, expect to shock the readers of Fairfax - busy coping with their dose of Switzer denialism - or The Graudian ...

That begins to sound really weird ...

I mean if you wanted to shock them, why not shock them directly?

In the usual way Newman is still making it personal and all about him - that's what happens when you have an insatiable ego. And he's still quoting Roy Spencer:

The climate consensus of the 70s, like the period since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established in 1988, was dominated by politics, not science. I was reminded of how deeply political awareness has infected today's academies when I received an apology from a respected climate scientist who corrected his own public cheap shot at me. He said, "I attempt to be politically even-handed ... I try to steer a middle course as a scientist." 
Really? Surely science is not about neutrality? It is about evidence and conclusions which fall where they will. So when an internationally acclaimed climatologist like Roy Spencer from the University of Alabama at Huntsville dispassionately analyses climate models covering 33 years and concludes that both the surface and satellite observations produce linear temperature trends that are below 87 of the 90 models used in the comparison, he does not politically neutralise his findings. They are empirical fact.

Dispassionate? Only in Newman's alternative universe.

A nanosecond's googling of the kind perfected by Greg Hunt would confirm that Roy Spencer doesn't have the reputation he once had, not since he slipped into the creationist/intelligent design tent.

You can wander far and wide just by googling Roy Spencer and creationism and/or intelligent design, and you can land on many pages dedicated to the fun, including Yes, Roy Spencer IS a creationist.

Who'd have thought we'd still be having creationist fun this late in the game. Perhaps only in America, where the Pew survey keeps on asking the question and reporting it here:

According to a new Pew Research Center analysis, six-in-ten Americans (60%) say that “humans and other living things have evolved over time,” while a third (33%) reject the idea of evolution, saying that “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.” The share of the general public that says that humans have evolved over time is about the same as it was in 2009, when Pew Research last asked the question.

Meanwhile back with Newman, whom the pond understands is not related to Alfred E. - well at least the spelling proposes but perhaps they're brothers in surrealistic satirical arms - another name is flung into the digital ether without thought or pause:

Spencer is joined by celebrated Massachusetts Institute of Technology climatologist Richard Lindzen, who says: "I think that the latest (AR5) IPCC report has truly sunk to a level of hilarious incoherence. They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase." He is "willing to take bets that global average temperatures in 20 years will in fact be lower than they are now". Any takers?

Uh huh. Science as a form of gambling.

But again if you bother to google Lindzen, you quickly land on his wiki, and discover that the man has regularly shot himself in his foot, and maybe gambling isn't his strong suit:

According to an April 30, 2012 New York Times article, "Dr. Lindzen accepts the elementary tenets of climate science. He agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, calling people who dispute that point "nutty." He agrees that the level of it is rising because of human activity and that this should warm the climate." However, he believes that decreasing tropical cirrus clouds in a warmer world will allow more longwave radiation to escape the atmosphere, counteracting the warming. Lindzen first published this "iris" theory in 2001, and offered more support in a 2009 paper,but today "most mainstream researchers consider Dr. Lindzen’s theory discredited" according to the Times article. Dr. Lindzen acknowledged that the 2009 paper contained "some stupid mistakes" in his handling of the satellite data. "It was just embarrassing," he said in the Times interview. "The technical details of satellite measurements are really sort of grotesque. (here for the footnotes)

Speaking of a level of hilarious incoherence, as one does.

If you want a more detailed look at Lindzen, head off to that New York Times article, Clouds' Effect on Climate Change is Last Bastion for Dissenters (may be paywall affected), published at the end of April 2012, and ending this way:

In his Congressional appearances, speeches and popular writings, Dr. Lindzen offers little hint of how thin the published science supporting his position is. Instead, starting from his disputed iris mechanism, he makes what many of his colleagues see as an unwarranted leap of logic, professing near-certainty that climate change is not a problem society needs to worry about. 
 “You have politicians who are being told if they question this, they are anti-science,” Dr. Lindzen said. “We are trying to tell them, no, questioning is never anti-science.” 
 Among the experts most offended by Dr. Lindzen’s stance are many of his colleagues in the M.I.T. atmospheric sciences department, some of whom were once as skeptical as he about climate change. “Even if there were no political implications, it just seems deeply unprofessional and irresponsible to look at this and say, ‘We’re sure it’s not a problem,’ ” said Kerry A. Emanuel, another M.I.T. scientist. “It’s a special kind of risk, because it’s a risk to the collective civilization.”


So why doesn't Maurice "let the evidence and conclusions fall where they will" Newman worry about the reliability of his sources, and quote alternative understandings?

It can't be the word count, because he's allowed to blather on endlessly in his unscientific way. There seems to be plenty of space to consider difficulties and contingencies and exceptions and concerns, instead of run with dogmatic certainty ...

Nope, it's because he's in the grip of a "belief" and anyone floating in the ether who supports that "belief" is just more grist to the mill.

Newman is the perfect example of a person not open to debate and informed discussion.

Inevitably when you get into this situation, the debate stays personal and political:

What we now see is the unravelling of years of shoddy science and sloppy journalism. If it wasn't for independent Murdoch newspapers around the world, the mainstream media would be almost completely captured by the IPCC establishment. That is certainly true in Australia. For six or seven years we were bullied into accepting that the IPCC's assessment reports were the climate science bible. Its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, told us the IPCC relied solely on peer-reviewed literature. Then Murdoch papers alerted us to scientific scandals and Donna Laframboise, in her book The Delinquent Teenager, astonished us with her extraordinary revelation that of 18,000 references in the IPCC's AR4 report, one-third were not peer reviewed. Some were Greenpeace press releases, others student papers and working papers from a conference. In some chapters, the majority of references were not peer reviewed. Many lead authors were inexperienced, or linked to advocate groups like WWF and Greenpeace. Why are we not surprised?

You see, the reptiles at the lizard Oz are saving the world, and Maurice "I'm no scientist" Newman can berate others for being inexperienced ...

Self-serving? Down the rabbit hole with Alice and Maurice?

You betcha.

And of course it wouldn't do if the piece couldn't be rounded out with a bout of international conspiracy theory:

The IPCC was bound to be captured by the green movement. After all, it is a political body. It is not a panel of scientists but a panel of governments driven by the UN. Its sole purpose is to assess the risks of human-induced climate change. It has spawned industries. One is scientists determined to find an anthropogenic cause. Another is climate remediation. And, naturally, an industry to redistribute taxes to sustain it all. With hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, this cartel will deny all contrary evidence. Its very survival depends on it. But the tide is turning and Mother Nature has signalled her intention not to co-operate. 

And finally a return to that Wagnerian motif that it's all about him, Maurice:

In the meantime, childish personal attacks on those who point out flaws in IPCC reasoning and advice only increase scepticism. They are no substitute for empirical evidence and are well into diminishing returns. The party's over.

This from a man whose empirical evidence consists of quoting a couple of scientists with a dubious reputation.

The trouble of course is that the more attention is paid to Newman, the more gratified he is, and the more he goes on in ways certain to attract attention.

It's childish, and some might think it wiser just to play a stone wall, in a Shakespearean way, and ignore him, but once again at the bottom of the piece comes that killer conclusion:

Maurice Newman is chairman of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council.

So what will Maurice be telling Tony Abbott about the billions he intends to piss against the wall fighting a problem that allegedly doesn't exist ...?

How does Greg Hunt sleep at night?

Tell me grasshopper, what is the sound of crickets?

So what's the real point of all the climate wars and the distractions arising therefrom?

Does David Pope provide a clue? And more Popery here.

Yep, make out like bandits while the sun shines, and never mind if it's a little warming. Just don the budgie smugglers and smuggle away ...

Is the game finally up for the Fairfaxians ...?

Just to repeat that question ... is the game finally up for the Fairfaxians?

Have the sheep decided that to get the clicks they need to look and sound like Murdochian wolves?

First a flashback or two.

Last October the Fairfaxians grandly announced a change of policy:

You can read Climate change: a note from our Letters editors, but the take home message was a simple one:

We do not ban writers whose views suggest they are climate change deniers or sceptics. We consider their letters and arguments. But we believe the argument over whether climate change is happening and whether it is man-made has been thrashed out extensively by leading scientists and on our pages and that the main debate now is about its effects, severity, and what society does about it. 
Climate change deniers or sceptics are free to express opinions and political views on our page but not to misrepresent facts. This applies to all our contributors on any subject. On that basis, a letter that says, "there is no sign humans have caused climate change" would not make the grade for our page.

Oh it was all very grand and proper, but now we have to fast forward to a piece already noted by the pond,  "expert reviewer" John McLean, which was published under both the SMH and Age mastheads.

In the case of the SMH, it had an elaborate explanation of the content in the headers: How politics clouds the climate change debate, The world's so-called authority on climate change engages in exaggerated science and has become a political tool.

Thoughtfully, the Fairfaxians provided an illustration by John Spooner, a notorious denialist, as you can read in Climate change denialism, pedophilia and Fairfax Media, a piece which, since it was about a cartoonist and an illustrator, happily led with this cheerful cartoon by Toles:

But we digress.

Had McLean's piece been a letter, according to Fairfax's new standards, it would have fallen at the first hurdle, if only because of the disingenuous presentation of McLean's credentials, but also because of the many substantial misrepresentations within the piece.

You had to head over to Crikey to learn about that, with Elaine McKewon scribbling The Big Oil-backed denier who hoodwinked Fairfax.

You can read the rest at Crikey, paywall permitting, but at the best all you can say about the exercise is that Fairfax was economical with the truth, or profoundly ignorant, or deliberately perverse and wanting to follow the reptiles of Oz down the path of denialism.

So what happens next? Well yesterday Fairfax returned to the very same theme, or pretty dry well, with Tom Switzer:

Sorry about all the visuals, but the pond simply can't get enough of the increasingly desperate attempts of illustrators to illustrate pieces about climate science in a remotely interesting way.

You can read Switzer's piece in Game finally up for carboncrats if you like, but it is just a classic bit of trolling, of provocative click-bait, and a fact-free zone as Switzer indulges in a sardonic frenzy of abuse.

The Antarctic expedition, Chris Turney, Tim Flannery, the ABC and Q and A, climate-change cassandras, climate hysteria, doomsayers, doomsday scenarios, climate mitigation, "the madness" and the rest all cop a blast, along with that interesting tribe, "the sophisticates":

Thanks to Abbott's forceful critique of Labor's ETS/carbon tax, and the persistent failure of the carboncrats to reach legally binding global agreements, Australians have risen up against this madness. 
At last, there is recognition not just that there are at least two sides to every story, but that when sophisticates seek to shut down debate, it amounts to an attack on the public interest.

Actually it seems there are at least two rants to every story, and plenty of heat in the spray, and at least "sophisticates" makes a change from dangerous inner city elites, but the only impact it had on the pond was to sweep the world back to a more innocent time when all "sophisticates" of the Hugh Hefner kind wanted was a hi fi system, impeccable grooming and endless fucks with willing bunnies.

Talk about sophisticated! Yep that sets Switzer somewhere around November 1967 ...

Go on Tom, hit us with some more dangerous sophistication:

Now you might have noted by this point that the pond is today a fact-free zone, but that's because Switzer wrote a piece devoted entirely to his ranting opinions, and entirely free of facts in relation to climate science.

Possibly this is how he got around the stern Fairfaxian injunction of last October:

Climate change deniers or sceptics are free to express opinions and political views on our page but not to misrepresent facts. 

Well if you don't have any facts, it's pretty hard to misrepresent them. Or is it?

Meanwhile, 2013 marked the 15th year of flat-lined global surface temperatures, despite record levels of carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere since 1998. And as the US shale "fracking" revolution shows, the most efficient way to cut emissions is not via command-and-control regulation but by allowing private drillers to expand natural gas production.

Or by pissing billions against the wall on direct action!

And how about this bizarre generalisation, which nonetheless proposes a certain specificity:

Historians will probably look back at the years 2006-09 as the time when the climate hysteria reached its peak in Australia, when rational debate was at its most restricted and politicians at their most gullible.

Ah, the old "probably" deployed in a sophisticated way to get Switzer out of jail should it "possibly" turn out down the track that he's a goose of the first water ...

So what excuse did the Fairfaxians offer for printing this rant?

Is Switzer a credible climate scientist? Does he have crucial new information and insights to impart?

Nope:

Hartcher is on leave and Switzer is the designated pinch hitter?

Keen students of Godwin's Law will of course remember certain historical precedents:

Adolf Hitler is the author of Mein Kampf. Paul von Hindenburg is on leave.

And so on.

Joseph Stalin is the author of The Foundations of Leninsim. Leon Trotsky is on leave.

Never mind, that's enough money for the swear jar for a whole week.

Here's the real point. Switzer is freely available to read in The Spectator, Australian colonial division, but who could be bothered to pay for the pleasure and get around the paywall?

So why do the Fairfaxians give him air, and a plug for a competing brand, which is likely to struggle even more when all the big British guns line up down under?

The most likely explanation is that the Fairfaxians are now well down the path of trolling and click bait:

(first sighted at Crikey. Can Huff Post's sideboobs be far behind, here)

But it's painful to watch this mob try to work out the intertubes, and at what cost to credibility.

Switzer only generated 177 comments as of the time of writing, and a few stern letters, and you can, if you want, read them here by leading off with Seeking proof of biased views is no basis for a serious debate.

Ian Dunlop even came out to earn the letter of the morning, here, and yet another handsome entry in the illustrator stakes:

Oh it's all well and good on one level, and sure the pond is helping them out with their click bait routines.

Another day's controversy done and dusted, much heat generated but bugger all light, the can kicked down the road a little further, social media in an uproar, the Fairfaxians at the heart of the debate, and never mind the climate science or the way that Tony Abbott is currently proposing to piss billions against the wall designed not to fix a problem Switzer insists doesn't exist ... while praising Abbott for his handling of the science.

Yep, Switzer hasn't even made it to stage two of denialism, known as the Bjorn Lomborg stage these days, where climate change and the human role in it is acknowledged, but its impact minimised and dismissed or seen as a boon and an opportunity ...

As for Fairfax?

Well we know what they're up to, but it demeans them and it demeans their brand and it demeans the intelligence of their readership, and it never ever leads to any good, which is why this might just be another sign that the game is up for the Fairfaxians ...

And now, since there's been nothing to write about, at least in a factual sense, it's on to explore the Fairfaxian editorial strategy visually:

In which Charles Dickens tackles the Caterists ...

Is it possible for a twittering twit to hold two contradictory thoughts in the head at the same time? Tyranny and a second print run?

But enough of exhibitionists and their supporters. Sheehan can continue on happily knowing he's at one with Bernardi and the Fairfaxians can continue to wonder why their subscription base flounders ...

Enough already.

Today there is a fresh outbreak of Caterism, which it turns out is way more difficult to contain than the contagion Dustin Hoffman confronted in the 1995 clunker Outbreak. (Poor old Wolfgang Petersen, if he'd only kept to submarines).

The digital splash's line is a particularly unfortunate - some might say stupid - way of starting a debate, since on all the evidence, the Abbott government wants evangelists, what with the evangelical ways of Kevin Donnelly long on view, while Ken Wiltshire has also been well down the evangelical path for a long time, as he showed in an opinion piece for the reptiles, On all counts, Coalition deserves independents.

Wiltshire blathered on about Edmund Burke and called on the independents to support the coalition, while flapping his moosh about the dangers of the "radical social and economic objectives of the Greens" via private member's bills and conscience votes. 

Oh the shock and the shame of a politician voting according to conscience:

Through this back door Labor would be able to introduce the Greens' priorities on gay marriage, softer border protection, and heftier mining taxes and so on. It is a safe bet that the voters of Lyne, New England and Kennedy are opposed to these and many other Greens' demands to which Labor and Wilkie will almost certainly succumb, especially after July 1 next year. 

Wiltshire wrapped up his evangelical plea for conservatism and for the independents  thusly:

... as Burke's number one Australian fan, former federal Liberal minister Jim Killen, would have recommended, the independents might do well to be guided by another saying attributed to Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Since we're now back in the evangelical history wars, it's an unfortunate attribution, but typical of the mangling of the past. 

Why try to give a quotation the gravitas of Burke when it's long been known that the odds are that he was unlikely to have made the observation? (And for more on that, head off to this investigation of the quote) 

Was Wiltshire attempting to prove that the intertubes is more informative than the evangelicals?

As you'd expect of an evangelical, Wiltshire is already on record as saying that the national curriculum is a failure.

The funniest thing?

The reptiles themselves were naked about the evangelical intent of the appointments:

The Abbott government will move today to reshape school education by appointing strong critics of the national curriculum to review what children are taught, amid fears a "cultural Left" agenda is failing students. 
The Education Minister, Christopher Pyne, is seeking a blueprint by mid-year to overhaul the curriculum, warning that the rise of "remedial" classes at universities proves the depths of the problem in Australian classrooms. Vowing to restore an "orthodox" curriculum, Mr Pyne will today name author and former teacher Kevin Donnelly and business professor Ken Wiltshire to lead the review. The appointments clear the way for reforms that could expunge parts of the history syllabus that Tony Abbott has blasted for favouring Labor and the unions but glossing over the work of Coalition prime ministers. 
Mr Donnelly is a fierce critic of the "relativism" in the teaching program, while Professor Wiltshire has rejected the emphasis on "competencies" and urged a sharper focus on knowledge and assessment. 
The looming changes could spark another "culture war", given past brawls, including John Howard's criticism in 2007 of the "shameful" neglect of Australian history and the disputes over Julia Gillard's introduction of the national curriculum in 2010.

They even headed it Christopher Pyne tackles leftist 'bias' in classrooms (behind the paywall because information should never be free), without a shred or hint of irony, so firmly are the reptiles at the Oz in crusader mode.

Expunge? Such a quaint, but nobly Stalinist word:

1. to strike or blot out; obliterate; erase. 
2. to eliminate completely; efface; destroy.

Yep, that's the way to deal with history. Expunge the bits you don't like, maintain the ideological and theological rage.

The reptiles even provided a handy guide to the way the evangelicals were already deeply committed to their theology:

It took Orwellian cheek, mixed with typical poodle Pyne hubris, to dress up this pair of crusaders as being free of partisan bias and blessed with open minds capable of devising a curriculum for parents that deals with "real-world issues", whatever they might be, though they clearly exclude all greenie policies, gay marriage, climate science, taxes on the rich, you know all the nasty bits that need to be expunged ...

Like his mate, Wiltshire is a values man:

"A school curriculum should be based on a set of values, yet it is almost impossible to determine what values have been explicitly used to design the proposed model," he wrote of the changes under the Gillard government. 
 "Curriculum should also be knowledge-based, yet we are faced with an experiment that focuses on process or competencies." 

He's also deeply old-fashioned, though perhaps that will be useful in the era of the Abbott/Turnbull days of the NBN:

Professor Wiltshire also attacked the "astounding devaluation of the book" in modern teaching.

What's really astounding is that Wiltshire should be blathering on about "books", when the notion of a book in these iPad, Kindle days is extremely nebulous.

Of course Donnelly is more rabid, and the lizards were happy to trot out some of the farthest reaches of his paranoia:

Mr Donnelly, a regular contributor to The Australian, has warned against a "subjective" view of culture that neglects the Judeo-Christian values at the core of Australian institutions. 
He has also savaged a civics curriculum that teaches that "citizenship means different things to different people at different times", rather than preparing students for an understanding of their responsibilities. "The civics curriculum argues in favour of a post-modern, deconstructed definition of citizenship," he wrote last year. 
"The flaws are manifest. What right do Australians have to expect migrants to accept our laws, institutions and way of life? "Such a subjective view of citizenship allows Islamic fundamentalists to justify mistreating women and carrying out jihad against non-believers." 
Mandating a "cultural left national curriculum" would fail students, he wrote.

Amazing stuff - as if your average secular atheist is on side with Islamic fundamentalists, when in reality it's the Christian fundamentalists who take their side on subjects such as gay marriage. And if that puts Donnelly and Wiltshire on the side of Islamic fundamentalists, so be it.

But while exploring this valley of the quaint, we've completely ignored the Caterists, scribbling furiously in Australian curriculum beyond saving, behind the paywall because of the speed with which the contagion spreads.

This is hardly surprising if you think about it for a nano-second, because the head Caterist is a dingbat, a supremely blinkered and stupid man who affects the guise of a practical man tilting at the windmill of academic verbiage, a bit like the twit Alderman Cute, as portrayed by Dickens:

"I am a plain man, and a practical man; and I go to work in a plain and practical way ... There's a great deal of nonsense talked about Want - "hard up, you know: that's the phrase, isn't it? ha! ha! ha! and I intend to Put It Down. There's a certain amount of cant in vogue about Starvation, and I mean to Put It Down! That's all! Lord bless you ... you may Put Down anything among this sort of people, if you only know the way to set about it."

Of course Dickens was only warming up and would hit his stride with the likes of Gradgrind and Bounderby, and Nick Cater is a tragedy on two levels - that Dickens should have mocked his kind, yet they keep bobbing up like mushrooms, and now, having bobbed up again, Dickens isn't around to mock and make fun of this sort of nonsense:

At every turn, the curriculum appears intent on taking the most dismal brutal view of every episode in human history. The industrial revolution's contribution to the world is restricted to "the transatlantic slave trade and convict transportation". It led, we are told, to "longer working hours for low pay and the use of children as a cheap source of labour" and is best interpreted through reading the works of Charles Dickens. 
The reforming instincts of 19th-century liberals that led to the end of transportation, slavery and child labour are whitewashed from history.

Just the juxtaposition of those two thoughts is such an astonishing piece of stupidity, it made the pond's day, since it doesn't seem to have occurred to Cater that Dickens might have been one of those very same nineteenth-century liberals with a keen reforming instinct...

It's so astonishingly dumb that the pond feared that Cater might use himself as a compelling example of the complete failure of education systems throughout the world.

If you read just one work of Dickens. you'll cop all the reforming instincts you'll need, and if you happen to luck into Hard Times, you'll have the wondrous Bounderby and the ever so practical Gradgrind for company:

Mr Gradgrind walked homeward from the school, in a state of considerable satisfaction. It was his school, and he intended it to be a model. He intended every child in it to be a model — just as the young Gradgrinds were all models. 
There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every one. They had been lectured at, from their tenderest years; coursed, like little hares. Almost as soon as they could run alone, they had been made to run to the lecture-room. The first object with which they had an association, or of which they had a remembrance, was a large black board with a dry Ogre chalking ghastly white figures on it. 
Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an Ogre. Fact forbid! I only use the word to express a monster in a lecturing castle, with Heaven knows how many heads manipulated into one, taking childhood captive, and dragging it into gloomy statistical dens by the hair. 
No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the subject, each little Gradgrind having at five years old dissected the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven Charles’s Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. No little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it had never heard of those celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous ruminating quadruped with several stomachs.

Apologies. Up against Cater, Dickens is such fun, and you can get the rest of Hard Times here.

There's plenty from Cater which would have been like fresh meat to Dickens. Where one might suggest that the curriculum is inclined to state the obvious, Cater sees some kind of conspiracy:

They will be asked to "interrogate" Rachel Carson's The Silent Spring and 1970 editions of Mother Earth News magazine, before considering the "rights of nature recognition - that humans and their natural environment are closely interrelated".

Yep, we should stand by for Caterist course 101, of the Gradgrindian kind, explaining how humans and their natural environment aren't closely interrelated.

Sustainability is a particular bugbear of the Caterists:

Sustainability in science develops "an appreciation for the interconnectedness of Earth's biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere".

Because they're not interconnected at all!

Sheesh, you just sat Non-relational non-related Caterism 101, and already you've failed the next stage by proposing interconnectedness ... What next? The sensible, sustainable use of resources, when really we should be tearing them all up and shipping them to China ...

The pond could have spent all day wading through the implications of Cater's profound stupidity, but in the end, it was too much and instead there came a profound welling of sadness for the hapless designers of the curriculum, who had laboured long and hard on developing ways to interest and engage students, only to be confronted by the superficial stupidities of a cherry picking twit, who it has to be said, excels himself with his closer:

Christopher Pyne has been condemned as a culture warrior for having the audacity to question this tosh. The opposition has accused him of attempting to politicise the curriculum, and has labelled his chosen reviewers, Kevin Donnelly and Ken Wiltshire, as ideologues. 
 If the Education Minister is to be criticised, it is for imagining this irredeemable document can be tidied up and put back on the shelf when the only realistic course of action is to tear the damn thing up.

Oh he's the very model of a modern revolutionary. Tear the whole thing up! You might now head off to read Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, but we'll settle for more of Gradgrind:

Don't bother telling us that the English language "provides rich and engaging contexts for developing students' abilities," or that "texts provide the means for communication". 
In our own inexpert way, we had sort of gathered that. 
Just tell us how you plan to teach literacy and numeracy, and what else you are planning to put into the kiddies' heads.

Oh sorry, that was Cater. Here's Gradgrind:

“Now what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!” ...
Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir - peremptorily Thomas - Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind - no, sir!

And so on, and the real tragedy?

Published in 1854, and yet here and now, a goose too dumb to realise he'd been sent up rotten by Dickens. If only Cater had an education, if only he'd done some reading ...

If only Dickens were around in 2014. He - and so we - would have such fun with the reptiles and the Caterists ...

(Below: a portrait of a nineteenth century forebear of Nick Cater. Oh how happy the children look. Poor Louisa. Poor Tom. They only wanted to go to the circus.)

A tedious start to Monday, and Cory Bernardi and Paul Sheehan to blame ...

(Above: oh dear, more Cory and that six-pack story is here. Eek, how did big Mal get into that other shot?)


Is there any more tedious argument than whether various historical figures actually existed?

Christ, Muhammad, the Buddha, Shakspere and so on and so forth.

It might be possible to mount a case that Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford, was the original author of the Qur'an, but what a tedious exercise.

This sort of nit-picking obscures the more interesting point that both the Qur'an and the Bible are full of absurdities.

So it continues in the present day. The pond has no actual evidence that Paul Sheehan exists. He could well be a Fairfaxian invention, a gigantic cosmic joke, while Cory Bernardi might well be a mythological South Australian creature up there with the bunyip.

As any South Australian knows this creature lurked in the River Murray, and now reports the news to the citizens of Gawler, and apparently still robs tourists at Murray Bridge, scaring or titillating children in the process:

Yep, it's easy to see a little of Cory Bernardi in that creature.

So what happens when two mythological creatures come together? Why you get:

Right there in the splash you can see one of the mythical creatures adopting a conflationary approach to help out another mythical creature.

There's still no evidence they exist, but we can at least dissect what's left, the wretched scribbles of Paul Sheehan.

For a start, there hasn't been a parade of bigotry. For the most part, what the pond has seen has been a parade of mockery ... and for ideas that are exactly, precisely rabid, as noted by some of Bernardi's own colleagues, with perhaps a few wishing he'd go off to join his natural party, the DLP.

But that's Sheehan all over, talking of hate, as if the original hater can be excused the hate because a few hate back, and defending the indefensible, because generally Sheehan himself is completely indefensible and inexcusable, and yet he provides the Fairfaxians with the click bait they love, and so the troll lurks in his cave, just like the troll Bernardi lukrs in the Senate, and like that Murray Bridge troll, they both come out to scare the readers provided a gold coin can be found ...

You can read So ready to throw book at Bernardi without reading it if you like, but it's a wretched effort, right up there with the worst of Sheehan.

Sheehan begins, for example, by conscripting a remark made by Barak Obama back in the summer of 2008, when he gave a Father's Day sermon at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago, which was actually addressed to the black community:

... if we are honest with ourselves, we'll admit that what too many fathers also are missing - missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it. You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled - doubled - since we were children. We know the statistics - that children who grow up without a father are rive times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.

Sheehan omits any reference to the African-American community and black children, and instead starts at the point of "We know the statistics".

Does it matter that Obama is addressing a particularly acute concern in relation to a particular community, a problem which has in great part been driven by drugs and by the war on drugs, which has seen a vastly disproportionate number of black men locked up in prison?

It does, because from it Sheehan immediately launches into another generalisation which is patently wrong:

Yes, we do know the statistics. But that hasn't stopped an avalanche of hate - and I use the word advisedly - being unleashed against Cory Bernardi for quoting and echoing the sentiments of Obama in his book The Conservative Revolution (Connor Court 2013).

Sheesh, they even put it in another splash:

So Bernardi is quoting and echoing the sentiments of Obama about the African-American community and black children? Pull the other one ....

An honest writer would have at least written "Yes we do know the statistics about the African-American community and black children in the United States", but Sheehan isn't interested in honesty, not when he can whip up a lathering and a frothing and foaming about an avalanche of hate - despite the reality that one of the things that gets him going, all the fun on Amazon reviewing Bernardi's book, is patently an avalanche of laughter and mockery ...

The rest of it is similarly gold standard Sheehan, and remarkably he's sounding more and more like someone scribbling for the reptiles at the lizard Oz.

The "orchestrated campaign" which arranged the "avalanche of hate" is all the fault of the ABC and Fairfax Media:

All week, Fairfax Media has published a string of negative reporting, commentary and remarks about Bernardi,yet in this coverage no-one has even pretended to have read the book.

What are we to take from this? Well clearly anyone who loves Bernardi would be doing an injury to him by spending a nickel or a dime on Fairfax Media; contrariwise, anyone who finds it hard to read Paul Sheehan's attempts to justify Bernardi would be doing an injury to themselves by spending a nickel or a dime on Fairfax Media.

Why you may as well head off to the official organ of the Liberal Government, The Australian, and partake of a dose of your daily kool-aid:

Why the official organ of the Abbott government even has an official EXCLUSIVE, as you'd expect for Pravda down under, celebrating a government which can still only think in terms of stunts.

It turns out the government has now managed to reduce its three word slogans to two words, all in the name of economic efficiency:

Uh huh, and then we can standby over the next few years, for examples of all the various unintended consequences that flow from said stunt ...

Perhaps you like your prejudice and bile tabloid lite, and the pond has already recommended a robust source:

But it turns out that you don't have to troop off to the Terror to get a critique of the ABC-Fairfaxian follies.

You can cop that from Fairfax and Sheehan:

Monday: the first story that suggested Bernardi's book was controversial appeared, as night follows day, on the ABC. Within hours of the ABC report, and interview by Bernardi on ABC TV following up on that report, Bernardi's office in Adelaide was inundated by phone calls. ''The office was overwhelmed with calls,'' Bernardi told me. ''There was clearly an orchestrated campaign of abuse which was levelled at my staff.''

Oh those cardigan wearers persecuting the poor hapless Bernardi ... what a sad looking victim trotting out his victimology routine.

But here's the thing that puzzles the pond. How can Sheehan stand to be a part of this vicious ABC-Fairfax hate machine? Shouldn't he do a Gerard Henderson and head off to join the other lizards frolicking in their natural home?

Meanwhile, Sheehan gets so desperate that he resorts to a little colonial forelock tugging to a British judge:

If they had (read the book), they would see Bernardi quotes a plethora of studies and that it was a British Family Court judge, Sir Paul Coleridge, not Bernardi, who came up with the phrase that traditional families should be the ''gold standard'' as the best protector of children's welfare. Based on his Family Court experience, the judge said family breakdown was the root cause of most social ills and warns: ''What is a matter of private concern when it is on a small scale becomes a matter of public concern when it reaches epidemic proportions.''

But a nanoseconds googling quickly tells the reader that Coleridge is just another anti-gay marriage campaigner (Gay Marriage 'Wrong Policy') with a bee in his bonnet about marriage of the kind that appeals to UK Telegraph readers (End the scourge of divorce).

So here's the thing. Does it matter whether Bernardi invented the phrase "gold standard" or whether he's simply a simpering copycat, ready to scribble down whatever his distant colonial overlords tell him to think about 'gold standard' marriage?

Does it matter if one denialist invented the notion of sundry "gates" if another denialist roams around talking up all these very same "gates"? (ClimateGate, whatever, you get the sheep picture).

Speaking of selective arguments, Sheehan rounds it out with a quote from Bernardi designed to prove that he's just a pussy cat, and then concludes:

Not exactly rabid. The same cannot be said for the parade of bigotry over the past seven days - absurdly claiming to be in defence of tolerance.

To get to the "not exactly rabid" Sheehan has to overlook Bernardi on abortion as a "death industry", as if women placed in invidious situations and making impossibly difficult choices are part of a killing machine.

It sounded - it still sounds - profoundly rabid, and it was - it is - profoundly offensive, and if you happen to be interested in tolerance, you will no doubt be aware of many women who have made this difficult choice and can live without Bernardi's hate.

Sheehan couldn't go there, because he'd have ended up in a discussion of the kind Andrew P. Street recently mounted in Cory Bernardi, it's not abortion campaigners who are pro-death. It's you, in which he noted the wildness and contradictions in Bernardi's claims about abortion (issues given another airing in Amy Gray's Libs stifle debate while touting 'battle of ideas').

 Or the more general observations of Nick Dyrenfurth in False conservatives mask right-wing misfits, Cory Bernardi is inspired more by America's Tea Party than Britain's Tories.

In fact everybody piled in, with Karen Brooks in The toxic judgment of single parents quoting Carrie Bickmore, John Birmingham attempting satire in We're blessed to have Cory Bernardi batting for us, and Jack Waterford in the Canberra Times, with Cory Bernardi's unnatural alliances could come from left and right, attempting to portray Bernardi as a hapless bumbler:

Cory Bernardi is an earnest, probably sincere, politician who has closely studied the techniques of the American Christian right. He has attempted to mimic both the techniques and the style of presenting them in Australia in an effort to build up a following, a movement and a stage for his ambitions. Mostly, however, he is fairly ineffective, other than in playing the numbers among smallish groups. The public, in particular, has never warmed to him, and not only because of what he says or thinks but because there is, alas, something about him that makes people feel uneasy. Almost all of his public relations successes depend on someone picking up - and very predictably - his cues. Only when others depict him as a monster does he seem humanised, possibly even persecuted.

The bizarre way Waterford's piece runs is that if we ignore politicians, including Senators in the upper house of the federal government, they'll just go away ... as if somehow the Labor party was responsible for Bernardi publishing his tome.

Put it another way. Paul Sheehan lite.

By the way, the Dyrenfurth piece had a splendid illustration:

The best that poor old Michael Mucci could mount for Sheehan?

Baa indeed. As if right wing sheep marching together, like Sheehan and Bernardi, were suddenly exempt from Orwellian observation ...

But you have to hand it to Mucci. He's a flexible chap, so he was standing by to help out John Birmingham with this one:

Oh those crazy, confused Fairfaxians ...

But back to Sheehan, and what really gives the game away is Sheehan's embrace of the "false conservatives", the crazed right-wing misfits who want to re-make the Liberal party into a kind of down under tea party:

Wednesday: Entsch weighs in via Fairfax Media, insinuating Bernardi is a self-loathing homosexual and asking what Bernardi would think if a member of his family turned out to be gay: ''Would he advocate sterilisation?'' 
This is despicable, and there is a subtext to this. After the Coalition won government last year, Tony Abbott dropped Entsch from the position of chief whip. And Entsch is friendly with Malcolm Turnbull, who is openly contemptuous of Bernardi. Entsch even mentioned Turnbull in his attack on Bernardi, saying Turnbull had been raised by his single father and was not a lesser person for that.

As usual, the pond didn't get the point. It's despicable that Entsch mentioned Malcolm Turnbull being raised by his single father and not being a lesser person for it?

But happily the pond did get a few takeaway messages.

Sheehan would be better off joining the reptiles, Bernardi would be better off heading off to the south in the good old USA and joining a Baptist church, and then the rest of the readership could enjoy all the weevils arising from the ABC-Fairfaxian alliance.

Instead single handedly (unless you count in a few chumps like Sheehan) Bernardi has done more to destroy national productivity and sensible discussion in a week than others manage in a year.

And the pond is left with the dire impression that spending a nickel or a dime on Fairfax is a complete waste of time and money. Better to spend it on the sight of a bunyip arising from the ruins of the Murray river ...

Meanwhile, as we're speaking about Malcolm Turnbull, for a closer, how about sharing some of the mockery around, without worrying about parentage, and instead talking about an actual issue?

(More Moir here).