The Pond's Sunday homily, wherein Pellism, Jensenism, piano limbs and complementarianism of the Adam and Eve kind go on an outing together ...

(Above: ice, what ice? Warming, what global warming?)

And so belatedly to the belated thoughts of Cardinal George Pell in the Sunday Terror, currently doing a Glenn Beck in Israel, as recounted in Pilgrims in Galilee.

The Neo-Catechumenal Way community has its elegant House of Beatitudes on the northern shores of the lake, comprising a small seminary for trainee priests and a large pilgrim centre. We visited the library, the two chapels (one for the Eucharist, one for the Word of God) and crawled through the small narrow gate, a symbol for our striving for heaven.

Let's hope the Cardinal has had time to follow another bunch of pilgrims, six British adventurers who became the first team to row to the magnetic North Pole, a symbol of their striving to make sense of global warming.

No doubt pedants and climate deniers will insist that they only rowed 450 miles from Resolution Bay in Canada, and had to drag the boat for the last three hours across ice floes and lumps of broken ice.

As usual, journalists were quick to seize on quick cheap ideological theological points that have nothing to do with the Cardinal's understanding of reality:

Rowing to the pole in an open boat was possible because climate change has meant the Arctic ice sheet has retreated record distances in the last 30 years. (Rowers reach 'impossible' North Pole, thanks to global warming).

Climate change? What climate change?

Of late Pell seems to have gone quiet on climate science denialism - fret not, he will return from his junket to come to grips with canoes and heretics - and instead taken up charades:

Jesus gave these charges only after asking Peter three times did he love him. We acted out this encounter with a seminarian asking each pilgrim in Christ's name "Do you love me?"

An important question for pilgrims.

And an equally important question for gays before they propose marriage, because it remains a long and rocky road in Australia, unlike our friends in the Netherlands who have been happily married for a decade (longer than my first marriage, it has to be noted).

Well there's nothing more ineffably boring than a man on a junket scribbling about the junket, and so it is with Pell:

We travelled from the southern tip of Sinai to Galilee in northern Israel in one long day. The Sea of Galilee is a favourite spot for me and I am glad Jesus enjoyed the locale and came there to pray as well as to teach.

Yes, Jesus was a tourist with fine taste for locales, and no doubt recommends Ray-Bans when travelling in summer ...

Enough already, time to drop in on the Sydney Anglicans, as they attempt to give the Calvinist pursuit of misery and guilt a good name, and who better than Michael Jensen to ask in that nepotic ministry:

Can church politics be played Christianly?

Yep, there are weighty matters afoot in The art of godly church politics?

Jensen outlines a number of principles for the conduct of internal church warfare (bickering, politics, power grabs, snide asides, call it what you will), starting with the notion that the quality of the means matter more than the delivery of the ends. This would rule Tony "I'd even think about selling my arse to score the precioussss" Abbott from playing Sydney Anglican politics (The day Abbott bared his soul).

Shockingly, Jensen acknowledges that Christians share a weakness of the flesh, which rather quaintly casts the pleasure of a good fuck in the more sordid light of the lust for the flesh.

Lordy, we've always enjoyed that rhetoric since the days the Victorians draped thingamejibs over table and piano legs.

Oh okay, we know that's an urban myth, but can there be smoke without fire?

I was requested by a lady to escort her to a seminary for young ladies, and on being ushered into the reception-room, conceive my astonishment at beholding a square piano-forte with four limbs. However, that the ladies who visited their daughters might feel in its full force the extreme delicacy of the mistress of the establishment, and her care to preserve in their utmost purity the ideas of the young ladies under her charge, she had dressed all these four limbs in modest little trousers, with frills at the bottom of them! (Frederick Marryat, A diary in America: with remarks on its institutions).

Poor Frederick also got hauled over the coals by one chaste young lady, who insisted that the word limb be used rather than that racy word leg. Talk about the unholy lusts of the flesh.

Speaking of women, Jenkins is quite grand in his inclusive third rule for church politics:

... a godly church politics ought to seek the inclusion of women as well as men, and the young as well as the old.

It turns out that this is all very well, but hard to implement:

The response to this is not tokenism or the introduction of quotas, but rather a determination to change among those who operate with the church-political sphere. It's harder than it looks, of course: people - especially women - are very busy.

Yes, women are terribly busy, and so running the church, and having women as actual ministers would be a terrible imposition. Better leave that sort of time-destroying business to men, who lead lives of leisure, and let women get on with their especially busy lives, looking after the leisurely men.

Besides, then they'd have to change the wiki on the Sydney Anglicans, and who wants change simply for the sake of change?

One of the visible differences between Sydney and the majority of other Anglican dioceses in Australia has been its unwillingness to allow the ordination of women to the priesthood (itself a term infrequently used in the diocese) or presbyterate. This issue is an indicator of Sydney's difference in ecclesiology and theology to most other dioceses within the Anglican Communion. (here, and also Ordination of women in the Anglican diocese of Sydney).

But enough of Jensen, because with that bit of specious pleading about busy women, he broke several of his inclusionist principles, most notably the last one about the temptation to use spiritual language as an instrument of coercion, since it's impossible to cite a better example of instruments of coercion than the denial of status to women within the Sydney Anglican community.

Still, you will have the pleasure of learning the arcane meaning of complementarianism if you read the piece and the comments to the end.

Roughly put, it means all Anglicans are equal, but male Anglicans are more equal than female Anglicans ... in yet another inspiring tribute to the ongoing validity of the laws enunciated by George Orwell in Animal Farm.

This is of course the same theology that underpinned Michele Bachmann's little outburst about submission, which caused such a fuss in the USA recently:

Today, the tenets of complementarianism are spelled out in a misogynistic document called the Danvers Statement, which is widely disseminated throughout the evangelical community primarily through the international and interdenominational organization known as the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

Almost every major Christian denomination subscribes to and aggressively promotes male headship. Many Christians are committed complementarians even if they do not use the term to describe their views. Some have never heard the term but are so indoctrinated into the model they can chant the mantras of complementarianism to perfection. (Submissive question: We have a right to know sacred beliefs).

Not to worry. You can read on the Sydney Anglican site of people ready and willing to call themselves complementarians.

As for the Danvers Statement?

Well you can either go first to the wiki, or you can get the good 'Adam and Eve' oil at The Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

Here's a taster:

Based on our understanding of Biblical teachings, we affirm the following:
Both Adam and Eve were created in God's image, equal before God as persons and distinct in their manhood and womanhood (Gen 1:26-27, 2:18).
Distinctions in masculine and feminine roles are ordained by God as part of the created order, and should find an echo in every human heart (Gen 2:18, 21-24; 1 Cor 11:7-9; 1 Tim 2:12-14).
Adam's headship in marriage was established by God before the Fall, and was not a result of sin (Gen 2:16-18, 21-24, 3:1-13; 1 Cor 11:7-9).
The Fall introduced distortions into the relationships between men and women (Gen 3:1-7, 12, 16).
In the home, the husband's loving, humble headship tends to be replaced by domination or passivity; the wife's intelligent, willing submission tends to be replaced by usurpation or servility.
In the church, sin inclines men toward a worldly love of power or an abdication of spiritual responsibility, and inclines women to resist limitations on their roles or to neglect the use of their gifts in appropriate ministries.

Golly, one minute you're frolicking with Michael Jensen and the Sydney Calvinists, and the next thing you know you're off with the pixies, which is to say fundamentalist complementarian Baptists still spruiking Adam and Eve and the fall.

But it does suggest one change Jensen can make to his text.

These days it's not that many women are too busy to get engaged with the Sydney Anglicans, it's that they're too sensible.

Let the boys play with their toys and their church politics, especially when there's no point banging your head against an Adam and Eve complementarian view of the world ...

(Below: beam me up Scotty, and fear not, your left behind pets can be taken care of by Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, USA).

Christopher Pearson, and the joys of heterosexual marriage, present company excluded ...

(Above: screen cap, link below. We just wanted to preserve on the intertubes the strange sight of 'dictatorship of relativism' for all to enjoy).

There's no more whimsical, or perhaps bizarre sight, than a self-admittedly gay man (nurture or nature?), who hasn't experienced the joys of heterosexual marriage, starting off a piece by quoting a pope who also hasn't experienced the joys of heterosexual marriage (no, being a bride of Christ isn't quite the same thing) ...

It always seems to involve warbling on about the joys, benefits and singularity of traditional heterosexual marriage.

It seems Pope and Pearson follow the Mae West line: Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.

The pond of course likes marriage so much it's sampled it several times, and believes firmly in Ambrose Bierce's definition: Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two. It would only take the most minute edit to bring it up to date: Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a master, and two slaves, making in all, two.

Never mind, let's gloss over the way the tradition of marriage has at various times embraced polygamy, civil marriage, common-law marriage, and nikah urfi, amongst other odd rituals.

Let us not recite as our text for the day Matthew 25:

25:1 Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.
25:2 And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.

Yes, the five that were foolish probably read Christopher Pearson carrying on about the dictatorship of the relative, while failing to note the way a single bridegroom could score ten virgins even in Christ's time.

Now where were we?

Oh that's right, humbuggery and dictatorship and moral relativism and Pope and Christopher Pearson scribbling his opener for Vote against gay marriage:

Days before he was elected Pope, Joseph Ratzinger attributed the crisis in modern Europe to "the dictatorship of relativism". It was an interesting choice of words for several reasons.

Most of us don't associate autocratic systems with shifting values. Nor do we tend to think of absolute values as some sort of birthright. Yet the notion that a web of contingent values - or what used to be called political correctness - can amount to a form of tyranny is quite plausible.

Yep, plausible tyranny. Put it another way: high falutin' blather and abstract nonsense is what you get, and not a single mention of the long and varied history of marriage.

I guess if you actually got to talking about relative social structures through the ages, or even worse love and intimacy and the sharing of juices in tongue-smacking lip kissing and emotional commitment and engagement ... well it all might get a little unseemly, sordid and racy, perhaps even personal, and certainly relative, and perhaps even involving relationships.

You might even wonder why a gay man who's never going to embark on marriage is so keen to defend conventional, traditional heterosexual marriage against the forces of evil determined to bring it down:

That marriage is a specifically heterosexual institution has been a tenet of all the main religions and every legal system of any consequence before the present day. The onus of persuading people to support a fundamental change to the character of so sturdy an institution is considerable. Normlessness hasn't yet become entrenched enough in suburban Australia.

Uh huh. Well there seems to be no impediment for Pearson to perform what was once a tradition for gays, and indulge in a sham heterosexual marriage.

It was quite the done thing in the glory days of studio Hollywood, and celebrated as marriages of convenience or lavender marriages, a la Rock Hudson.

It was the sturdy response of a sturdy institution to sturdy stupidity in the matter of sexuality, and surely if it's good enough for Cole Porter, and Harold Nicholson and Rock Hudson, it's good enough for such a sturdy supporter of the sturdy joys of heterosexual marriage.

But enough of the fun of seeing a gay man and a chaste priest praise the joys of marriage, without indulging, because it seems Peter van Onselen got up the high-minded Pearson's nose by arguing:

"I would have more respect for opponents of gay marriage if they simply stated they didn't want homosexuals to have access to it. It would carry the virtue of honesty, if also the vice of bigotry."

Oh dear, does this upset Pearson, or what:

As many readers will know, I came out of the closet in my student days, back in 1971. When I argue against homosexuals having access to marriage, as I've done consistently in the intervening 40 years, am I guilty of bigotry?

Surely not. Nor, unless they also have an unreasonable - and now rare - hostility to all homosexuals, are heterosexual people who mount the same arguments.

Can gays be guilty of self-loathing? Surely not.

You see, it's all a matter of upholding a tradition, even, if as Groucho Marx suggested, it's a tradition you'd prefer not to get involved with. (How did he put it? I don't care to belong to a marriage club that accepts people like me as marriage partners, or some such thing).

It's rather like the argument against female priests. Opposing female ordination can't just be construed as evidence of bigotry or misogyny. Rather, it's based on respect for the 2000-year-old tradition, following Christ's example at the Last Supper, that the priesthood be exclusively male. Not all roles are unisex. Men are categorically unfit to be nuns, as are women to be priests and blokes to be brides.

So there you have it. A couple of thousand years of patriarchy is a really good argument for the continuation of the patriarchy for a couple more thousand years...

This is of course an equally excellent argument for the Lutheran practise of separating men and women in churches, or the Islamic one of herding women into veiled segregation, or any other example you might want to emulate about keeping the gig male.

It'll be a handy argument next time you attend a board meeting.

Really we've had so many hundreds of years of men running companies as company directors, because let's face it, we're just following Christ's example in the last supper, and not all roles are unisex, and women are categorically unfit to be company directors.

Yes there's nothing like a couple of thousand years of misogyny to justify current misogyny, and the wonder of it is the way that Islamics and Catholics manage to sound exactly the same:

Women are not given the right to instigate divorce because they are prone to emotional and irrational decision making. A husband, however, can divorce his wife at any time he so wishes. Ayatollah Ali Moghtadai

Yes, and it's been going on as a noble tradition for hundreds of years, so why change it.

Well by this time in proceedings, the pond was in fits of laughter, and rolling Jaffas down the aisles, while wiping away tears from Pearson's comedy stylings, but then it turned out that Pearson was a complete and utter tease:

I had intended to use the rest of this column to flesh out why the prospects of any gay marriage legislation being passed in the present federal parliament were negligible. But word has just reached me that Arthur Sinodinos, an old friend and comrade in arms, is going to nominate for the Senate seat vacated last week by Helen Coonan. This is a great coup for the Coalition and good news for anyone interested in the quality of governance in Australia.

So there it must rest. We cannot flesh out this column any further because Pearson has failed to flesh out his explanation of why gay flesh can't mingle in matrimony.

Could it be that he suddenly got tired of the absurdity of his arguments, and seized on Arthur Sinodinos as a lifeline? Anything to stop parroting the same tired, absurd, desperate, bigoted, misogynist arguments?

Still, we've learned a couple of things. You can't take the bigotry and misogyny away from conservatives and traditionalists, not when they have several thousand years of bigotry and misogyny as a precedent.

But perhaps the funniest styling is to learn that tolerance and a 'live and let live' philosophy is in fact a form of tyranny, a kind of dictatorship.

We look forward to Pearson explaining to Irish parents how their politically correct desire that priests not fiddle with their children is a kind of tyranny ...

Meanwhile, conservative gays who want to experience the joys of marriage, such as they are, are somehow pilloried as radical extremists intending to bring down an institution neither Pearson nor Ratzinger feel strongly enough about to participate in ...

As we often note, every day with the commentariat is a day down the rabbit hole with Alice, a veritable hookah with the caterpillar, a mushroom with the mouse, and a tea party with the mad hatter, but some days are more rabbit hole than others ...

Perhaps what we need is a Lobster quadrille, with Pearson and the Pope joining in the dance:

‘“Will you walk a little faster?” said a whiting to a snail.
“There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle — will you come and join the dance?
 

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?

“You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!”
But the snail replied “Too far, too far!” and gave a look askance —
Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.

Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.

‘“What matters it how far we go?” his scaly friend replied.
“There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
The further off from England the nearer is to France —
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?”’

(Below: and a couple of cartoons to fill in the unfleshed gap in fleshy arguments).

The anonymous editorialist at The Australian, and yet more war-mongering blather disguised as fact gathering ......

"Traffic lights are a Bolshevist menace... Traffic lights are things which are set up to try and control traffic to try and control individuals on the roads," Dr Phelps (NSW Liberal whip in the upper house) told Parliament.

"They are normally programmed by some central planner who will tell you when you can come and when you can go."

Mr Gay (NSW Roads Minister) eventually intervened.

"Tell them I have no plans to remove traffic lights," he told Dr Phelps.

The rebuke did not stop the whip from suggesting an alternative.

"Roundabouts. Roundabouts represent freedom. Roundabouts represent democracy at its finest," he said. (NSW MP sees red over traffic lights).

Pure comedy gold from the archives, and if you want more comedy gold, why not read about Dr. Phelps (history) taking on climate change and the Australian Museum in Phelps v Australian Museum over climate change.

No wonder the muddle headed wombat thought about a career in Australian politics, but sadly we have to leave Dr. Phelps for the even richer comedy stylings of the anonymous editorialist at The Australian, as showcased in Rescuing a vital discipline.

Sadly in a wasted youth, the pond, like Dr. Phelps, once studied history, and lurched away from university with an honours degree in the wretched subject.

As Molesworth once remarked, history started badly and have been geting steadly worse

But could history sink any lower than the effort by the anon editorialist at the Oz?

As the Anzac centenary approaches, educators should capitalise on the intense interest to promote history. Students are sufficiently discerning to expect a factual narrative about the meaning of the anniversary rather than wayward, anti-war interpretations.

Wayward anti-war interpretations? Of a complete and disastrous schemozzle (Yiddish, I'm sure you know, for a mess).

Does the anon editorialist have the first clue of the complete silliness of that notion?

Did he or she ever talk with Gallipoli veterans? Well in the way of things, if you sat down with actual veterans (we even had a couple in the extended family), the most likely interpretation you got from those willing to talk about the experience (not everyone was inclined to relive the horror) would have been a wayward anti-war interpretation.

Never mind that the term "factual narrative" is semantic gibberish, and that "facts" in any decent history are always contested, debated, ordered, weighed, considered, contextualised and sometimes overthrown.

There's no need to be a post-modernist relativist to work out that what The Australian thinks is a "fact" is in all likelihood a handy set of wayward personal prejudices backed up by an ill-sorted assembly of half-truths ...

What the anon editorialist possibly means is that the "factual narrative" should produce some jingoistic nationalistic interpretation useful to nurturing todays's warriors ... and befitting the sort of narrow narrative which generated the Gallipoli legend, and which of late has been driving traffic to Turkey each anniversary in search of C.E.W. Bean's mythology.

This is the kind of fatuous narrative that sees the likes of 'Jack' Simpson and his donkey sanitised into a mythic figure, stripped of his more attractive qualities, which included a wayward inclination to larrikinism, a wayward ability to desert from the merchant navy, and a reluctant warrior attitude which saw him absent himself from his unit.

Simpson also had a wayward capacity to be a radical trade unionist who fervently believed in the need for revolution in England, and who by default would have thought Rupert Murdoch and The Australian and its pathetic anonymous editorialist sucked really big time.

I see that the railway men who get 24 bob a week have got a rise of 3½ percent. I suppose that they must have caught the owners when they were drunk and [in] a generous state of mind to have got such a hell of a rise. I suppose the railwaymen will be going about like Lords now that they have got a shilling a week rise but I suppose the Lords and Dukes will take it off them next year again as the expenses will be too big for them to keep up ... I often wonder when the working men of England will wake up and see things as other people see them. What they want in England is a good revolution and that will clear some of these Millionaires and Lords and Dukes out of it and then with a Labour Government they will almost be able to make their own conditions.

Yeah Jack and while you're at it, clear out the ratbags at The Australian.

Of course none of this is usually mentioned in most wayward Australian histories of Gallipoli, just as most wayward histories fail to mention that authorities had trouble finding fresh willing victims to trot off to the slaughter, and this resulted in two epic pro-conscription campaigns, in which PM Billy Hughes was backed by wayward equivalents of The Australian.

The first in October 1916 failed by a small margin, and a second in December 1917 was defeated by a larger margin (and more in the wiki here).

That's possibly because even the most wayward historian finds it hard to mount a pro-war case for the carnage and slaughter of trench warfare in the first world war. The reasons and the causes of the war, bedded in imperial and colonial desires and contests, and the conduct and strategies of the war shocked the generation involved in it.

Gallipoli was a minor folly up against the activities of General Haig, but a military folly it was, and despite attempts over the years, as a campaign it was as irredeemable as General Haig was as a strategist. Fussell put this well:

... although one doesn't want to be too hard on Haig ... who has been well calumniated already ... it must be said that it now appears was that one thing the war was testing was the usefulness of the earnest Scottish character in a situation demanding the military equivalent of wit and invention. Haig had none. He was stubborn, self-righteous, inflexible, intolerant—especially of the French—and quite humourless ... Indeed, one powerful legacy of Haig's performance is the conviction among the imaginative and intelligent today of the unredeemable defectiveness of all civil and military leaders. Haig could be said to have established the paradigm. (here).

Although one doesn't want to be too hard on Gallipoli ... the strategies have been well calumniated already ... it could be said that quite early in the war it established the unredeemable defectiveness of military strategies for the war, and established something of a paradigm.

While it's hard to be Gandhi-like about Adolf Hitler and the second world war - where better equipment and increased firepower helped generate even more carnage - it's hard to be wear rosy spectacles about the first world war, especially if one wants to honour the feelings and attitudes of many of those who fought, suffered or died in it.

There's more gibberish in the editorial, of course, as if historiography had never been invented. The Australian can't resist being infinitely offensive to the practise of history, as it gets agitated about historians wanting to move away from the "national narrative":

They recommend subjects that "connect this country to the region and the world" and those "like Australian environmental history, which connect Aboriginal, economic and cultural history and historical geography".

Uh huh. We look forward to The Australian's syllabus, which will propose a study of the Australian heritage by way of a syllabus that refuses to connect Australia to the region and the world. Perhaps we could transpose Gallipoli to Bacchus Marsh.

Much would depend on the quality of the new courses, but if students are to understand Australia's past in an international context or the nation's environmental history, such courses would need to be built on solid, factual narratives, not ideology.

Yep, and there we go again, with the notion of solid factual narratives, not ideology, as if within the very words used by the anon edit there's no deeply ideological bias, as if somehow there's a set of "facts" untainted by ideology.

Somehow the anon edit thinks that a Joe Friday - all we want are the facts ma'am - approach to history is viable, and that an intelligent interpretation of said facts will lead to doom and gloom.

Too many university and school history courses built around historical interpretation, thematic strands and teachers' moral perceptions are devoid of rigorous content, leaving many graduates without basic knowledge. They may, for example, have listened to teachers laud anti-Vietnam War protests as social activism, but remain woefully ignorant about colonialism, Communism, the domino theory or the Australia-US alliance. Reinforcing such an approach would be a mistake.

Uh huh. Well scribbling such generalist tosh and expecting it to be taken seriously would also be a mistake, if only because an understanding of Vietnam war protests would necessarily involve an understanding of colonialism, the misbegotten presence of French, then United States and Australian troops in a failed set of colonial wars, and the fatuity of the domino theory ... unless of course you happen to think the United States won the war, the domino theory was viable, and everything turned out jolly well.

Well, if the anon edit at The Australian is so keen on his or her own ideological approach, why then they always have their own Brendan 'if you don't like Rupert Murdoch, start your own newspaper' O'Neill approach.

Yep, if you don't like anti-war interpretations of war, why not head off to Afghanistan, and get involved in a war right now. Then you can regale students in history classes with your very own military experiences.

Then you might discover the truth that Keith Miller noted. Pressure is a Messerschmitt up your arse, playing cricket and writing editorials for The Australian is not ...

Alternatively, you might start reading the poetry of the first world war, much of it produced by poets subsequently killed in action, and most often with a wayward anti-war interpretation. Try a little Siegfried Sassoon, or try a little Wilfred Owen, and you might end up with a wayward response to war and the pity of war, with the poetry in the pity.

Ah well, in the way of these sordid cross-promotional times, the anon edit was just chiming in to promote a piece by Frank Furedi for the lizard Oz's Inquirer section, but I didn't go hunting for the piece, because I have a chance to bash my head with a hammer for several hours this fine morning.

Instead there's a chance to re-run Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est, a poem first given to me by a kindly history teacher intent on going beyond the facts, and evoking the abject misery of trench warfare, a misery my own grandfather rarely mentioned, though he frequently woke at night with memories of the Somme in winter.

It should be included in all wayward interpretations of history - if nothing else, the average student might discover why mustard gas was banned - and why all the idle jolly hockey sticks chatter of the anon editorialist about wayward anti-war interpretations is a kind of obscenity:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Put it another way:

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, sed dulcius pro patria vivere, et dulcissimum pro patria bibere. Ergo, bibamus pro salute patriae" In English this is rendered as: "It is sweet and right to die for the homeland, but it is sweeter to live for the homeland, and the sweetest to drink for it. Therefore, let us drink to the health of the homeland.

(Below: found here at an outrageous Beverly Hills High School site with a few wayward views of history).

Michael Danby, a Stalinist show trial, and as a bonus extra, getting down and dirty with the anon edit at The Australian ...

(Above: and a special shout out to any decidedly odd Muslim who strays across this page, because everyone loves a festival, Eid Mubarak).

Joseph Vissarionovichj Stalin died on the 5th March 1953, and so, more sadly, did Russian composer Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev.

After that date, it became a tad harder to become a Stalinist. While some might revere the memory, the homicidal music within the man died with him, and unlike Prokofiev, he left no decent tunes to the world. Other lunatics followed at the head of the Soviet Union, but it's worth remembering that in the Khruschev era, some of the worst moments of Stalinism were revealed, as in Khruschev's memoirs:

Stalin called everyone who didn't agree with him an "enemy of the people." He said that they wanted to restore the old order, and for this purpose, "the enemies of the people" had linked up with the forces of reaction internationally. As a result, several hundred thousand honest people perished. Everyone lived in fear in those days. Everyone expected that at any moment there would be a knock on the door in the middle of the night and that knock on the door would prove fatal ... [P]eople not to Stalin's liking were annihilated, honest party members, irreproachable people, loyal and hard workers for our cause who had gone through the school of revolutionary struggle under Lenin's leadership. This was utter and complete arbitrariness. And now is all this to be forgiven and forgotten? Never! (at Khrushchev's wiki).

But in the arcane world of left wing politics, the accusation of being a Stalinist, a Leninist, a Trotskyite, a Marxist, a Maoist, or half a dozen other key brands are the favourite tools of abuse, and never die.

They should immediately invoke an extended Godwin's Law, but you can guess from Michael Danby's Whether she likes it or nyet, Lee Rihannon was a Stalinist that he doesn't have the first clue about the meaning of that fine law ...

Danby spends a bilious amount of time establishing that Greenie Senator Lee Rhiannon was a Stalinist because she headed off to Russia to meet Leonid Brezhnev, who was allegedly head of a "neo-Stalinist regime". Which means that anyone who heads off to China these days, is most likely a supporter of the current mob in power, who run what can only be described as a "neo-Maoist" regime.

As anyone who has seen that fine film The Founding of a Republic will testify, it turns out that Mao was a devoted believer in capitalism with Chinese characteristics, an ardent defender of consumerism, and a fierce devotee of shopping in malls. I guess in a way that makes us all neo-Maoists ...

Never mind, Danby spends a lot of time establishing that Rhiannon's parents were ardent Communists and Sovietphiles, and actually joined at a time when Stalin was running the show, and we all know that the sins of the parents are the sins of the children, and then it's a quick cut to the seventies and there's Gorman nee Rhiannon becoming a senior office bearer for the youth wing of the Soviet commies, and at this point you might ask who gives a flying fuck, seeing as how Julia Gillard once typed envelopes for the Socialist Forum, which moved the likes of Ron Boswell to dig in the dirt and scribble The real Julia is true to her socialist forum past.

Does this smearing in any way phase Danby? Not on your socialist nelly:

Now, some people will say that it’s hypocritical for me to criticise Senator Rhiannon’s when there are people in the Labor Party who have similar pasts.

Well I guess that makes the pond some of those people who think that Michael Danby is a hypocrite and a fool of the first water. Especially as he tries to make a distinction between Rhiannon's past and those of his brethren:

It’s true that many people who grew up in the Vietnam War era were radicalised as students and joined Maoist, Trotskyist or anarchist student groups. But most of them rapidly grew out this youthful phase and became moderate social democrats – some, such as Christopher Pearson, who supported the Khmer Rouge in his youth, have even become conservatives!

Uh huh. And now for the special pleading:

Senator Rhiannon’s case is different. She grew up not as a wild student radical, but as a dedicated member of a pro-Soviet Communist Party.

Oh slap me thighs, and kill me with laughter. What a goose.

And then he trips up a little as he hoes in with the steel caps:

When the CPA tried to free itself from Stalinism, she followed her parents into the breakaway pro-Soviet SPA. She loyally supported all the crimes of the Soviet Union during that time. And this was not a passing phase for her. She remained a senior and active member of the SPA until well into her 30s. She only abandoned communism when it had visibly failed as a useful vehicle for left-wing politics. She then joined the Greens, which is now the main vehicle for left-wing politics in Australia.

And there you have it. An explicit statement by a member of the Labor party that it is not the main vehicle for left-wing politics in Australia. So if you fancy yourself as a leftie, what are you doing in the Labor party? Isn't it about time you joined Christopher Pearson and crossed the aisle?

The greater irony in all this of course is that while Danby is busy constructing a Stalinist show trial for Rhiannon and the greenies, he's replicating the very process that Gerard Henderson, Ron Boswell, and the rest of the mob do for the Labor party, as well as the Greens (and we occasionally like to do with that renegade bland suit, Peter "short memory" Garrett).

Danby's piece ends in a fine rhetorical flourish:

What Australians wanted to hear Senator Rhiannon say was that she had repudiated communism, not just as a tactical convenience but as a matter of conviction; and that she regretted the harm caused by her years of advocacy and activism for the Soviet Union. Senator Rhiannon did none of these things and the Australian people will judge her accordingly.

Well we'd like to add our own fine rhetorical flourish:

What Australians wanted to hear the Australian Labor Party say is that it has repudiated neo-Maoist Chinese communism, not just as a tactical convenience but as a matter of conviction; and that it regrets the harm caused by its years of advocacy and activism for the neo-Maoist Chinese communists, starting with Gough Whitlam, and so has banned the sale of Australian iron ore and coal to the neo-Maoists until Tibet is free, and Uyghur leadder Rebiya Kadeer can roam the world freely. The Australian Labor Party did none of these things and the Australian people will judge it accordingly.

True, you could level the same charge at the Liberal party. So perhaps the Australian people might just go shopping in a mall. Whatever.

The pond has no truck with Rhiannon - liking Russian music and the films of Eisenstein isn't the basis for a love of Communism - but has even less taste for Stalinist show trials, and the world of Michael Danby, but how clever of him to confirm that the routine trashing of the past affiliations of Labor party members by Liberals is a fine and dandy way to conduct politics ...

Face it. If we were all judged by the actions of our younger days - ah the sweet bliss of drug-induced euphoria - who could pass as innocent in the world of Danby, or Henderson, or Ron Boswell, or Christopher Pearson ...

It's best to judge by the actions and policies of the moment, and what we can judge of Danby is that he knows how to write malicious, rhetorical, spiteful, snide tripe, right up there with the best of Gerard Henderson's offerings ...

Speaking of tripe, we have just enough time to note a couple of splendid offerings from the anonymous editorialist at The Australian, as he or she has a gigantic orgasm about the BHP profit in The boom we're happy to have:

The huge BHP profit has prompted calls for miners to pay a higher price for the right to extract finite minerals. This is not the time for knee-jerk reactions but there is room to canvass this issue in the broader context of the Henry recommendations and the October tax summit. Australians understand the economy is underpinned by resources: they are unmoved by ideological objections to mining. But they have a right to know the government is looking out for the national interest and ensuring miners pay appropriate levels of taxation.

Finite materials? Tax? Is this the same editorialist who scribbled Miners are right to keep the heat on tax?

Dear sweet absent lord, what will Tony say, when creeping socialism creeps ever further into the sweet-scented bosom of The Australian.

Oh come now, surely this must be as knee-jerk reaction, because as we all know, thanks to Tony, any tax on mining would ruin it, and we must continue steadfastly to rip the guts out of Australia and ship it off to China, and without a thought of recompense, as we do our bit to lift the standard of living for the Chinese citizenry and BHP shareholders ...

And then there was this bit of blather by the anon edit in Same-sex marriage debate must be shut down.

As always with The Australian, it poses in the name of liberal open debate, and then goes on to suggest that the evil Fairfax press is involved in shutting down the liberal, "open debate" of the likes of Bob Katter and Rebecca Hagelin and Miranda the Devine.

As usual you get this kind of unctuous disclaimer before the trolling begins:

The Australian leans towards libertarianism on social issues, believing the state should tread as lightly as possible around personal issues.

Libertarian? The rag wouldn't begin to know the meaning of the word.

It is not our role to pronounce one way or another on same-sex marriage, though we would caution the issue is far more complicated than gay "rights" supporters would have us believe.

Yeah, yeah, and New York is currently in the grip of complete moral collapse, unlike London ...

But the lowest of the low is surely the way The Australian treats the issue of gay marriage as a way to have a dust-up with the Fairfax press, while defending its ultra right-wing minions:

Dissenters, right or left, gay or straight, religious or irreligious, will always be welcome on the pages of this newspaper. We hope some self-styled intellectuals, who recently turned down invitations to write on these pages in order to retain what they perceive as their ideological "purity" change their minds.

Ideological purity? No, actually, it might just be a refusal to fall into line with Darth Vader and the evil empire, where minions can scribble with such withering contempt for "self-styled intellectuals".

Why would anyone assist in that kind of wankerdom and self-abuse? Is it ideological "purity" to avoid sewers and the excessive use of "inverted commas"?

We also hope that The Age survives the current reign of contempt for its readers and remains in business as a contributor to the debate, and that The Sydney Morning Herald continues to publish Farrelly's columns, if only because of the insight they offer into the confused minds of the inner-city moral-political class.

Fuck me dead. Did someone mention contempt, and the curled, sneering lip of the condescending anon edit as he or she scribbles about the confused inner city moral-political class, what ever that piece of bullshit humbuggery might mean?

And you an inner city reader, and you still buy The Australian? Pray tell, where did this self-loathing come from, when did it start? Around the time you started buying the rag? Do tell ...

Curiously, Farrelly is opposed to some forms of religion, but does not rule out the idea of an after-life. "In my next life I want to be smug," she tells us. Why wait?

Yes, why wait, when you can become a dickhead smug editorialist or columnist right now for Chairman Murdoch, just like the anonymous editorialist ... or Miranda the Devine.

Some things are indefensible, and lordy how The Australian is indefensible even on a good day ...

The commentariat, and beware creeping socialism or possibly the Under Toad ...

(Above: click to enlarge, any brain damage the responsibility of the clicker).

So many distressing things in the news of late.

There was BHP making a cool $22.5 billion profit in a year, around half the cost of the NBN, (a project designed to have a lifespan a little longer than a year), as a way of proving once and for all to all those leftie greens out there that the mining industry is having the most miserable time, with the suffering beyond the imagining of these pitiful unempathetic wankers. Roll back the mining tax, roll it back now.

Naturally The Australian came out with the correct spin for such a dire situation, as Matt Chambers produced Sting in BHP's $23bn record


Yep, Chambers delivered a blunt warning - much more effective than a sharp warning - that rising wages are fuelling inflation, proving once again that when examining the entrails, always look for the bad news as a way of distracting from the gigantic, ginormous size of the profit.

Indeed where would we all be without Harry Potter's magic cloak of invisibility and dire warnings that rising wages are fuelling inflation and could hold back an economy already suffering from falling productivity.

Oh it takes a special skill to produce doom and gloom, and urge the hamsters back in to their cages to increase productivity in the dire circumstance of a record profit.

Then there came a most dreadful thought, inspired by Bernard Keane's musings in Shadows of '75 creep across the political landscape.

As we all know, Malcolm Fraser, suffused with guilt over the way he seized power, in time came to be the most insufferable bore of any retired PM, full of sanctimonious righteousness and sounding like a pompous member of the landed gentry any time an issue crossed his path.

Even when he was right, it was easy to maintain the rage. If there was a cause worthy of guilt, you could find Fraser hovering like the ghost in Hamlet, or Banquo looking to join the evening meal ...

Could it be that Tony Abbott, after his recent displays of insufferable boorishness, attains power, turns out to be an extremely indifferent PM, much like Fraser, and then spends his latter years boring us to death with his Macbeth-like guilt for the way he seized the throne, scored the precioussss, and then didn't have a clue what to do with it?

Well stranger things have happened to Catholics who pretend to have a conscience. It's fair to say the average rugby league thug would shrink from the thuggee behaviour currently on view in the Liberal party, and possibly would have more nuanced plays in mind than Abbott, who can only think of coat hangers and knee caps and fingers up the bum (there, and you said we know nothing of sport).

Why it's sent poor old Malcolm Farr, token centrist at the gin-sozzled Punch, into a tizz in Scent of an election fuels Tony's faux outrage.

But enough of this. Today we announce a serious problem confronting the commentariat, the Murdoch press, and the world at large.

Creeping socialism!

This needs to be rooted out and expunged before the creeping socialists ruin record profits with high wages and falling productivity and declining profits, and it needs to start now, and our first port of call is the anonymous editorialist at The Australian as he or she scribbles Grounding a Qantas takeover.

The anon edit is alarmed at the prospect of normal capitalists going about their duties, performing a private equity takeover and degutting Qantas, the national airline which happens to be a private airline but somehow still gets called a national airline.

Where's Mitt Romney when we need him in the antipodes? Why he'd have it gutted and jobs cast to the four winds in a trice.

So we have a first class example of agrarian socialism:

Whatever undertakings might be made during a takeover bid, the inevitable asset stripping and scaling down of less-profitable arms of the airline would leave many Australians in regional and rural areas without comprehensive services.

As any decent member of the commentariat would know, the correct answer is 'well let them walk.'

Or if Brendan ' if you don't like the Murdoch press, start your own newspaper' O'Neill were writing the piece, the correct answer would be well let them start their own regional airline - or perhaps revive East-West Airlines, that noble business once based in Tamworth the heart of western civilisation (and they still have a pretty good pilot school at the 'drome).

But it gets worse, as the nutty anon edit preaches even more heresy of a fruity socialist kind:

... private equity firms have little interest in the core businesses of the companies they take over. It was no surprise, for example, that those who bought the Nine Network sacrificed the quality current affairs program Sunday and The Bulletin magazine. Unlike traditional capitalists who took risks in the marketplace to build long-term wealth by producing goods and services and paid dividends to shareholders, private equity mavens tend to be risk-averse and more interested in applying sophisticated accounting techniques to grab quick profits.

Oh dear, how dire and dreadful. Traditional wealth-nurturing capitalists versus parvenu johnny come lately nouveau riche capitalists. A distinction worthy of Trotsky warning us against capitalist profit-takers.

Perhaps Qantas should revert to government ownership?

Qantas has benefitted exponentially from its privatisation.

Yes, yes, that would be a step too far for creeping socialists. Must be canny in our creep.

So what to do? Perhaps call on the government?

Any significant ownership change, however, must be subject to a strict national interest test.

Yes, yes, let's call on the government to act.

Creeping socialism with agrarian socialist tendencies, and accompanying hypocritical cant:

The Australian supports the free market and believes that, generally, takeovers are not the business of government.

Talk about having your free market cake made out of socialist eggs and flour ... along with a hearty vote of confidence in Alan Joyce's "good management". By golly, that Barnaby Joyce is an inspiration to all.

Now how long before The Australian joins in the cry to make vegemite Australian-owned so we can all sleep soundly at night?

Meanwhile, there are other examples of creeping socialism, as Miranda the Devine pitches a product in Pouring cold water on a red-hot issue. It seems a mob called FireWatch have the perfect technology to reduce bushfires ... and even though some tests of the product didn't go so well - they were set up to be a flop, according to the owners - all it would take is for the government to drop a cool $300 million on a FireWatch network and all will be well. Well sort of well, because results comparable to Germany can't be guaranteed.

Yep, once again, it's all down to the government.

The answer lies not in the soil but in the federal government dropping a cool 300 mill all on Miranda's word - bugger the trials, let's have another one - and it leads that eminent socialist Miranda the Devine to ask Has Australia gone mad?

Well with so many covert and overt socialists in the Murdoch press, there can be only one answer. Yes Australia has gone mad, and creeping socialism is to blame ...

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Farrelly has only just realised that she's in love with Penny Wong and that Miranda the Devine writes repressive gibberish, as revealed in Let's shoot straight on gay marriage:

Never mind that we don't yet have a demographic breakdown on the London rioters, or that same-sex marriage is not actually legal in Britain, or that legalising gay marriage is unlikely to increase the incidence of fatherless families, or that fatherlessness by itself has never been shown to cause ''Hobbesian chaos''.

Never mind that Spain has legal same-sex marriage, and no such riots. Never mind that polygamy was standard Old Testament practice, that the church is demonstrably rife with paedophilia or that Jesus had two fathers. Never mind the sheer illogic of arguing that straight people must be married in order to nurture children but gay people, even when procreating, must not.

Hah! As if logic has anything to do with it!

For me, the question is this. Why do people feel this need to run my life, as well as theirs? Why do they feel dissent as a form of attack? The answer is not God, per se, or even belief. It's this sense of chosenness.

It seems reasonable to me to fight for the right to run your life your way; to marry and procreate and worship by your own lights. But it is entirely unreasonable, absent some genuine threat to social order, to force these values on others.

What's this? Liberal values with a small 'l', quite possibly verging on the libertarian?

Well the socialists in the Murdoch commentariat will have a thing or two to say about that ...

After all, we need rules:

Hang on, hang on. These rules are too simple. Let's sex them up a little. For starters:

No animal shall drink alcohol TO EXCESS
No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets
No animal shall kill any other animal WITHOUT CAUSE

Four legs good, two legs BETTER! Four legs good, two legs BETTER! Four legs good, two legs BETTER!

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

The government shall do nothing except when the commentariat demands it do something.

The government is to blame for everything, especially when it does something in response to the commentariat, who demand it do nothing, except when it should do something.

Capitalism is good, except when it is bad.

The NBN is outrageously expensive, but BHP is just making a living.

Agrarian socialism is true and just, except when it is wrong, but it is right when Miranda the Devine and Barnaby Joyce say it is ...

Oh yes, and great profits mean any mining tax is bad ...

And a huge profit shouldn't mean the hamsters/rats/squirrels get more than a half hour break from their work in the cage ...

Meanwhile, for those who came in late, and were puzzled by the reference to the Under Toad in the header, let John Irving explain:

In The World According to Garp there is a summer scene by the ocean, an episode wherein little Walt, so very young and vulnerable, is repeatedly warned by his parents to beware of the undertow along a stretch of dangerous shore. The undertow, they remind him, is very wicked today. Look out for the undertow. One morning they spot their small son alone on the beach, staring intently at the incoming waves. When asked what he's doing, he says, "I'm trying to see the Under Toad." All along he had mistaken the correct word and mythicized the fear it signaled into a creature of invisible but monstrous being. And Walt is right. Arising as if from the sea, the Under Toad squats upon the world's rim, bloated and watchful, the sign of a new star under whose baleful dispensation life must hence-forth proceed. (here)

For Under Toad, insert creeping socialism.

Put it another way:

Golly, the Devine is right, the whole world, and the pond along with it, has gone mad, and creeping socialism, or perhaps toads, the cause of it all ... and it's still only Thursday!

Janet Albrechtsen, and Qantas not the airline it once was ...

(Above: oh yes, hit me with another chocolate chip cookie, or perhaps some more of those cheesy cheese bites).

Only Wednesday, and yet it's hard to work out what was the more astonishing sight.

There's poor Brendan O'Neill shocked and appalled to discover that the UK Girl Guides have discovered there's more than one god in the world.

Silly Girl Guides, when we all know that there's only one god, and if you don't eat your spaghetti, she's a most vengeful deity. Or perhaps at long last the Catholic and Anglican conceptions of god have come into some kind of cohesive theological shape and battered the other aspirational gods of the Islamics, the Hindus and the Calathumpians into submission. (Where would we be without the comedy stylings of Brendan O'Neill at Counterpoint?)

It must be roughly equivalent to Bob Katter discovering that he has a gay brother, and now the commentariat are making hay, as in No gays Bob? Try closer to home (warning, forced video at end of link). The thought of having Katter as family automatically gives Carl Katter the sympathy vote, as it's always hard to talk sense, humanity, marriage or common bonds to a cut snake ...

And now, heaven forfend, Bob Katter is in the wars with Janet Albrechtsen, as she muses about the fate of Qantas in Sky's the limit for demanding Qantas workers:

Then Katter played the parochial card, arguing for new legislative restrictions on Qantas and pointing the finger at the "people from overseas" such as "Mr Cleverness" at Qantas (Joyce is Irish-born) and Gail Kelly (who hails from South Africa) at Westpac.

God forbid, Senator, that we should encourage the movement of people and trade in the 21st century.

Uh huh. God forbid, except perhaps we should discourage the movement of boat people showing entrepreneurial initiative trying to get to the lucky country ... If you can't afford a ticket on Qantas, you're simply not welcome!

For the rest of Albrechtsen's piece, she resorts to the Qantas management line, and indulges in a riot of union and worker bashing. Typical line? "... don't fall for the unions' wicked use of emotional tricks."

Naturally this is an excuse for Albrechtsen to trot out all sorts of tired, wicked management tricks, and forces the pond into a personal anecdote, as recently we had the increasingly rare pleasure of sampling the services of Qantas, not the airline it once was. Ah the joy of the fumes on an aged 767 ...

Lord knows, the captain tried hard, assuring us all he was a better pilot than he was a comedian, but then he made a fatal mistake. He also assured us that, with an ounce of luck, he'd get us to the gate on time, or maybe with a smidgin more luck, a little ahead of time.

We arrived an hour late, and the captain heaped the blame not on the fog that had disrupted Melbourne airport, but on a Singapore Airlines flight ahead of us that was taking a little time to land safely (perhaps they should have diverted to Avalon, so we could show those Asiatics how to do a rushed cowboy landing).

It was a Katterish performance in relation to a foreign airline that these days provides a better service, and which along with Virgin is now the preferred supplier of the pond's travel requirements.

Oh and a bag was lost - probably the Melbourne fog, and its late delivery to various addresses entertained us until we decided to collect it at the airport - and the flight back was also late, without the excuse of fog or Singapore Airlines ...

Not the airline it once was, but somehow it's all the fault of the surly workers, as opposed to the surly management.

Here's Albrechtsen lining up to blame the workers for the demise of Ansett, and preemptively blaming the workers for the decline and fall of Qantas, as if Geoff Dixon and Alan Joyce have had nothing to do with it:

Bring it on. For too long, unions at Qantas have got their way. If this is the modern face of the union movement, then unions have not yet secured a sensible, responsible place for themselves in the 21st-century workplace.

They have learned nothing from Ansett's demise 10 years ago, after years of union-dominated cost structures. And they have learned nothing from the broader union movement's diminishing membership.

In a case of industrial deja vu, get ready too for all sorts of claims thrown at the flying kangaroo, most of them highly emotional and economically irrational and some of them downright misleading and reckless.

Speaking of downright misleading and reckless, amazingly, Albrechtsen doesn't blame the carbon tax for the proposed staff cuts. Perhaps she doesn't want to get into bed with the highly emotional and economically irrational Tony Abbott, but it's also clear she doesn't have much of a clue about commercial airline operations.

Oh sure, she knows how to write about "commercially illiterate unions that want to stop Qantas from innovating and expanding", and "cheap emotion", clearly different to dear emotion, and unions unencumbered by logic, and the emotive "our flying kangaroo", and economic lunacy, and pilots' greedy demands, and the highfalutin' label of an association, deployed not just by the evil pilots but by the engineers, and "arrant nonsense" and so forth and etc ...

But if you want an alternative view, why not try one of my favourite blogs, by Ben Sandilands, which has of late been running hot with talk of Qantas.

Here's a few stories for starters, with the headers giving a fair clue to the content: Qantas hit by claims of dishonest accounting, failed management and another takeover bid, which it denies.

Forensic study of Qantas accounts undermines the company line about international losses.

How Qantas has butchered London flights.

Sandilands is prepared to look at all kinds of angles (Media coverage of Jetstar in Japan, OMG!) and isn't afraid of a little pilot and sheltered government Air Canada bashing (Emirates video: A study in media hysterics), and truly it would be a treat to see him tear strips off the fatuous Albrechtsen, who ends her piece thusly:

The same ill-conceived brand of Katter economics once argued in favour of so-called "national champions" to justify governments running airlines and taxpayers picking up the tab. It failed dismally: governments have no idea how to run efficient businesses.

Nor, it has to be said, did the management of Ansett, Compass (ah the glory days) and Tiger.

Oh okay Tiger is just Singapore Airlines in disguise, which is just Temasek Holdings in disguise, which is just the Singapore government in disguise, which is a vast relief and explains exactly why Singapore Airlines currently runs such an efficient business. It's because governments have no idea how to run efficient businesses ...

Meanwhile, you don't have to spend long in the world of Air Crash Investigations to realise that safety and efficiency are not always compatible in the world of number crunching, so that the things that Qantas traded on - safety and quality - have slipped in recent years. I mean, to get into bed with American Airlines and BA! What next? Air France?

But back to Albrechtsen:

Even dumber in economic terms is the prospect of fencing in Qantas with new demands to stop the airline growing its business overseas. As the experts will tell you, that's a sure way to turn a national carrier into a national basket case.

And there's the rub. In the international market place, the concept of a national carrier is now verging on the meaningless. It's no longer possible for Qantas to trade off on its iconic status as an Australian airline, and it's no longer enough for the company to fudge its accounts, downgrade its longhaul service and capacity, and chase the chimera of the Asian market, up against competitors with serious cash (AirAsia stuns with 200 plane order).

At that point, you're better off reading Sandilands rather than Albrechtsen:

In the days after the phase one announcement Joyce gave interviews in which he claimed the Asia based premium carrier, using A320s for short to medium haul routes, would feature lie flat beds in first class, to the disbelief of those who heard him.

There are many things that need to be examined in Qantas without delay, as the long haul operation loses more customers, and the group in general seems to be losing its mind.

And if you don't know why the people around Joyce listened with disbelief to idle chatter of lie flat beds in short and medium haul routes, you're about ready to appoint Janet Albrechtsen as your new company director with a fresh vision, which consists of union and worker bashing.

Good luck with that, and good luck to the flying kangaroo, and Singapore noodles and Hainanese chicken rice, here we come ...

(Below: a few old Qantas cartoons, with more Nicholson here).

Gerard Henderson, and a host of commentariat victims contend for funniest routine of the week ...

(Above: the pond remembering the glory days of Alan Jones).

It's always a laugh a minute out there with the commentariat, and perhaps the funniest routine heard this week was Janet Albrechtsen explaining in sombre tone how she'd been a victim of the Oslo affair, along with a number of other victims.

It was a cue of course for Dame Slap to go on and abuse all and sundry in the PC brigade for claiming victimhood status - and if you want more comedy stylings from Albrechtsen, you can always rely on Counterpoint. Happily, Albrechtsen was particularly exercised about Dame Slap's name being turned into Dame Snap in later versions of Enid Blyton books, and so we can go on referring to her as snappy Dame Slap.

The very same show saw Brendan O'Neill claiming victim status for king/queen, god and country, while a funny old kraut with a Dr. Strangelove accent claimed huge victimhood status for himself in Germany.

What's that you say? An unfortunate way to describe my genetic kith and kin on the German side of the family?

Not really, because a funny woodchuck moosehead Canuck academic lawyer up the front of the show established that ethnic jokes were perhaps the best way to establish that a person is correctly non-PC, and the last thing the pond wants is that anyone think it's somehow PC. After all, if Brendan O'Neill thinks it's fair and right and just and shows proper perspective to call him a faggot, who are we to argue with him? We now routinely think of him as a bundle of sticks suitable for burning ...

You might argue that the funniest sight was in reality the parrot, aka Alan Jones, bleating away at the truckie rally about the "most disgraceful thing that has ever been done to democracy" (sobbing into his mike about the size of the truckie crowd), or you might lead with Bronwyn Bishop moaning how the federal government wasn't legitimate, perhaps as a prelude for Gaddafi-overthrowing fervour from the miniscule herd of truckies, as others have done (Truckie sooks vs Libyans with real problems).

Truth to tell, you might have an argument, except that would clearly establish you as a signed up member of the PC brigade, anxious to do your worst with those hapless victims, Jones and his wannabe couldabeen monster convoy.

But soft, this is leading us into dangerous turf and anyhoo, today isn't Albrechtsen day, it belongs to that other hapless victim of the PC crowd, the noble Gerard Henderson, and he's in fine form in Road to ruin for traditional Labor, and yes, he's overwhelmed by the sight of all those proud dinkum truckies on the road.

As for the tragic, tawdry size of the protest? Don't you worry about that:

What was striking about the "Convoy of No Confidence" that rolled into Canberra yesterday was how many protesters looked like one-time traditional Labor voters. Not many employees or independent contractors can find the time or the money to travel to Canberra for a demonstration and the turnout was not large.

Yes, everybody would have been there, except they couldn't afford to be there, meaning that the bunch who did turn out must either be (a) well-heeled, in which case why all the whining and the whingeing and the moaning, or (b) rent a crowd agitators of the kind that routinely attend political demonstrations, or (c) backed by powerful forces intent on fomenting a gigantic international conspiracy, except these powerful forces couldn't organise a rally of Volvos (oh sorry enough with the ethnic jokes).

And don't you worry about the erratic, eccentric agenda on view either:

On ABC radio yesterday, Deborah Cameron described the convoy as "anti-everything". This misses the point. Sure, elements of the convoy oppose the carbon tax and/or the ban on live cattle exports and/or the proposed restrictions on gambling in licensed clubs and/or same sex marriage. But what united the convoy is that - to a man and woman - all the protesters want an election. Now.

Uh huh. Weird, because (a) Gerard Henderson continues to listen to Deborah Cameron on 702 at imminent risk to his health and sanity, and (b) somehow Gerard Henderson thinks a thousand or so plus people, including Gerard Henderson, Alan Jones and Tony Abbott wanting an election is enough to move the world and (c) somehow the convoy had more than a snowball's chance in hell of achieving said outcome.

Still, you have to marvel at the logic.

Some of the convoy leaders do not understand that the constitutional requirements of a double dissolution have not been met. Yet the conditions do exist whereby the Prime Minister could advise the Governor-General that a normal election should be held.

Yes, yes, silly truckies, not understanding constitutional law like benign condescending Uncle Gerard, when it's simple really.

Julia Gillard can just race off to the GeeGee, hand over the keys to the Lodge and bung on a do.

And they say the commentariat isn't in to the tooth fairy, the easter bunny and father xmas.

Oh dear, speaking of cliched stereotypes, you know where that sort of idle chit chat puts the pond. Yep, amongst the inner city 'leet:

Inner-city types, including some conservatives, tend to favour same-sex marriage and quite a few commentators are quick to sneer at Christians who regard marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Eek, at one with the evil latte sipping, chardonnay swallowing, possibly cardigan wearing, certainly ABC listening Deborah Camerons of the world. Quick, what will make it right?

But talk to some Labor MPs in suburban seats and they will recount, in confidence, how many Muslims and Hindus are offended by the concept.

Oh thank the lord, the fundamentalist Islamics and Hindus are at one with the Xians and all's well in the world. Thank the lord we can now forget the Huntington thesis so movingly propounded by Henderson:

In his 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, Huntington wrote: "The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power." (Militant Islam an enemy of the West - and Muslims).

Yes, it's time for a united fundamentalist fight for civilisation, which will see the overthrow of the illegitimate government of Australia, the cardigan wearers at the ABC, and the immediate despatch of inner city types to rural gulags where they can, Pol Pot style, learn the wisdom of the peasantry and serve out useful lives preparing pigs for consumption at the Australian and Melbourne clubs ...

The rest of Henderson's column peters out, in a standard rant against the carbon tax, which shows he's learned his lines well from his master, but not much else. Even his berating of the truckies as crude and unsophisticated swill doing the bidding of the ring masters has a hollow ring:

The protesters in the Canberra convoy may not be sophisticated in many ways.

But they do know that, in the present economic situation with the prospect of increasing unemployment, the introduction of a carbon tax doesn't make sense.

Yes, the truckies - and Henderson - know much more than the management of BlueScope Steel, whose management in the past has been highly critical of the carbon tax - yet somehow managed to scribble in their tax release:

Mr O’Malley said the Company is experiencing an unprecedented combination of economic challenges in the form of a record high Australian dollar, low steel prices and high raw material costs and these challenges are compounded by low domestic steel demand in the wake of the GFC.

“This is evidenced by the $487 million underlying EBIT loss experienced in FY2011 on our export sales. The economic conditions for export steelmaking from Australia appear unlikely to become favourable in the foreseeable future and our continued exposure to this market is clearly unsustainable. Our decision is a direct response to the economic factors affecting our business and is not related to the Federal Government’s proposed carbon tax.” (here).

Dammit. Here let me fix that press release. The Federal Government's proposed carbon tax is directly related to the decline and fall of everything in western civilisation, as well as all price increases, the strength of the Australian dollar, the decline of the manufacturing industry, rampant unemployment, and shortly the sky falling in.

There, that's better.

But then Henderson is tremendously sophisticated in his own guileless unsophisticated way, and an ability to ignore actual remarks by actual businesses is an important part of that sophistication.

Still, the end result is a good one so early in the week.

Now the pond can now reel away from Henderson chanting 'What do we want? Islamic law and a new election. And when do we want it? Now'!

It's the new theme song for pondies and unsophisticated truckies agitated by the prospect of gay marriage, the evil rule of Gillard in a country doing it exceptionally tough - way worse than Afghanistan - and where hapless members of the commentariat are routinely pilloried and persecuted and made victims by evil PC types ...

Oh lordy what a cruel country it is. Quick, beam me up Scotty, it's time to relax in Libya.

Come to think of it, Libya doesn't have the parrot squawking 24/7 ... do they know how lucky they are?

Oh and for the funniest routine so early in the week?

Sorry, we don't have the heart to take it away from Dame Slap. Sure the photo finish showed the parrot winning by a beak from Henderson but the judge's decision is final, and another example of how these hapless victims are persecuted by the ABC and inner city latte sippers the world over ...

(Below: the Factbricator™ has now been road-tested by Janet Albrechtsen, Gerard Henderson and the pond, and we all swear by it. Affidavits are freely available at the affidavit storage unit in Belconnen, a little known federal government service we all swear by ... Click to enlarge, or visit First Dog here for your own copy)