Janet Albrechtsen, the need to give CEOs squillions, monkeys and peanut factories

We've been extremely busy here trying to think up appropriate warning subtitles for historically incorrect movies to please our buddy Gerard Henderson:

Warning: the real Erin Brockovich doesn't look like this.

Warning: Sean Penn is not a homosexual.

Warning: Harrison Ford is not a real archeologist. Do not treat sensitive digs as shown in this movie. Be aware the final show in the series is a crime against humanity.

Warning: Citizen Kane is not William Randolph Hearst, and the cinematic treatment of the opera singer is in no way a satirical reference to his treatment of girlfriend Marian Davies.

Warning: Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky purport to be history but are naked Stalinist propaganda, which didn't stop Stalin from hating Ivan Part II so much he destroyed Part III. Hey ho.

Warning: any suggestion of a connection between the gunners in the World War II bomber epic Twelve O'Clock High and the fantasy battle scenes in Star Wars is a defamatory slur on George Lucas.

Warning: any suggestion that Bert Newton is actually alive in his current 20 to 1 shows, as opposed to an animatronic CGI figure, is a scurrilous rumor.

Warning: the children in Rabbit Proof Fence only went for a quick walk to the toilet, got lost and stayed away from home for a day because they were frightened they might be labelled the stolen generation. Gerard has proof of this!

Warning: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is scientifically feasible - anything you can imagine can come true. 

Warning: the sheep love displayed by Gene Wilder in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex is common, widespread, and rife in New Zealand.

Oh dear lord. Wikipedia lists hundreds of movies based on actual events or real people, all of them wildly, totally inaccurate. Can we just stop now Gerard and say if you want history read a history book, and if you want filthy innuendo, defamatory omissions, lies and half baked half truths, go to a movie  and eat the hot buttered popcorn of  dismal distortions and treacherous trumpery?

Moving along, Janet Albrechtsen is in fine form in Right's crazy class war on CEOs, where she shows just how compassionate a conservative should be.

Sure a few people are appalled at the behavior of the mindless money grubbing at high executive level that has led to the severe economic downturn these past few months. Correction - at the greedy inept behavior of the lumpenproletariat in taking out loans they had no way of repaying, the stupid sub-prime fools, thereby deceiving fair minded banks and kind hearted credit providers and creating the current morass.

But we have to remember, in a compassionate way, that greed is good. It seems silly Malcolm Turnbull has proposed giving shareholders a say on executive remuneration, and Tony Abbott endorsed the suggestion in his usual mindless cheerleader way.

This kind of thinking is just cheap, populist vote winning. There can't be any sensible suggestion that executive pay is out of control - they deserve a regular hundred per cent increase, or more, because it's just so exhausting and time consuming making sure the workers below only get a two per cent increase.

Or better still, no pay at all for Oz workers, by organising a shift to China. What a sensible solution, especially for a brand which has traded shamelessly in the past on it being as Australian as apple pie (or vegemite or aeroplane jelly or hard yakka or lamingtons if you somehow think apple pie has something to do with America).

Poor old Pacific Brand had no idea of the impending financial collapse and when they did they immediately handed back all their pay rises and decided to see how they could keep Australians in jobs. Correction: they pocketed the money and kept on heading to China.

And we all know how hard done by Sol Trujillo has been at Telstra, and how the company is in much better shape since he did all his hard work, and now heads into the sunset squillions richer. What a fine example of a stern board in action, controlling remuneration and doing the best for the company and its shareholders. (Own shares like we do? Nah, nah. Suckers, losers).

Albrechtsen goes on at length to explain how representative democracy works at a board level, and bizarrely seems to think that greater shareholder activism in some areas - voting on share issues and major mergers and acquisitions - is okay, because "those matters go directly to the fundamental nature and structure of their investment."

But somehow executive pay fails this test, never mind that executives might be paid a fortune in salaries and bonuses while reducing the value of a shareholder's investment to zero in a bankrupt company. Suddenly this kind of reward/activity is strictly and quintessentially an operational matter. 

And it's worked so well these last few months.

It's a funny old world. Albrechtsen carries on about such significant shareholder power leading to a stampede of talent out of public companies to private entities, or out of Australia altogether. Why not go to the Middle East? Indeedy, why not rush off to Dubai right now? (Just make sure you know how to abandon your car at the airport if times prove too tough).

Yes, in these desperate times, where else to turn than New Zealand as a prime example of the importance of deregulation, since talent always flows from the area of highest regulation to the least. (Is that a polite way of saying that gangsters and drug dealers and criminals always go the place with the least effective police enforcement because they think that helps them get away with their dirty deeds?)

So that explains why millions of entrepreneurs are flocking to New Zealand as we speak - it's anticipated the population will double from four to eight million in a couple of years, just because of this ironclad law and because Janet says it's so.

Finally we have a capper - Janet can see no reason to strangle incentive, never no mind if incentive has actually led the entire global financial system to the point of collapse. What's the problem? Meh.

Regrettably the Coalition - which should have this buried in its DNA - seems to be pandering to the opposite instinct. They are now beset with the jealousy and class war gene. We accept easily the vast amounts paid to golfers, tennis players, rock stars and actors. No one ever whines about the pay discrepancy between a key grip and lead actor.

Ah, now it all becomes clear. Janet Albrechtsen has never been on a film set and uses examples which show she doesn't have a clue. There's always one person who whines about the pay discrepancy between a key grip and a lead actor. And that's the key grip. They make life hell for the producers - they work out ways to get more overtime, to charge for gear, to whine and mope. There's only one person that whines more - and that's the gaffer, especially when it comes to burn time. 

It's left to the poor old  production manager to put up with the shit, along with the shit thrown about by the highly paid star, who has the personality of a deluded egotistical teenager, and the attention seeking skills of a two year old. ( No I didn't want the Perrier water, I wanted the Perrier-Jouet champagne, and I'm not going out on set until I get it).

Why do we constantly invoke such meaningless comparisons in the corporate sphere? We should be encouraging our best and brightest to run our most productive enterprises. While it may presently be fashionable to complain about the undoubted mistakes in executive compensation, let's not substitute a system that drives talent out of our key businesses.

That's right, there's compassionate conservatism at work, always worried about the fate of the rich. Sure there have been a few mistakes, but to complain is merely fashionable. Sure the herds of the best and the brightest have driven us towards a huge cliff, and helpfully shown us all how we can jump off it. But to worry about that is merely fashionable.

What should we do about the current failures? Nothing you dolts. Do you want to drive all these highly skilled people out of the game? Who'd fuck over the businesses and wreck the economies then?

But if all our best and brightest went overseas, replacing the unemployed best and brightest over there, wouldn't the unemployed best and brightest over there come over here, or at least come to New Zealand, and after deciding sheep love was an issue for them, come to the sparkling blue of Sydney Harbor, where a man can float a boat and make a fortune from pie in the sky? 

Or maybe we should ship all the CEOs off to China, so they closely supervise the businesses they've shipped there. None of that getting the Chinese peasants to do the work while they suck up lunches down at Finger Wharf in good ol' Woolloomooloo (don't you just love that name, so indigenous).

Second thoughts: who actually wants the best and the brightest who produced the current fuck up?

There you go again, cheap NZ jokes, stupid ideas, bile full of class hatred and jealousy. You're sounding like a Liberal in opposition Dorothy!

I guess Janet's right, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. If you buy the peanut factory, and let management rort all the peanuts, you get a bankrupt factory and plenty of rich monkeys. What a virtuous circle compassionate conservatism produces. (And fuck you if you want any peanuts).

Piers Akerman, child hating Arabs, Middle Eastern Peace, and the fat owl tilts at the Nobel Peace Prize

In other news today, pious Piers Akerman, sometimes known as the fat owl of the remove to undergraduate adolescents with a childish sense of humor, announced that Arab people don't love their children.

Correction: the fat owl approvingly quotes Golda Meir saying there would be no peace until the Arabs learned to love their children.

Correction: there would be no peace until Arabs learned how to strap bombs on to eleven year olds and blew them all to bits, thereby ending the issue about loving their children. Dead children don't need love.

Correction: while Hamas might have been voted into power by democratic electoral processes, democracy doesn't count when the fat owl says it doesn't.

Correction: terrorist supporters in inner western Sydney councils are well-meaning idiots.

Correction: it's much more sensible to give real support for the people in Gaza through economic development, such as the Portland Trust charity which aims to raise funds for a billion dollar development in Ramallah, including 15,000 homes.

Correction: forget about Gaza, the last Israeli assault produced damage it's estimated will cost a billion and a half dollars to repair. Why throw good money after bad, why try to help people who don't love their children?

Correction: most of the killing in the world today is Muslim on Muslim. The United States tries hard, but doesn't try hard enough. Israel is just a minor player in Muslim killings. It has to lift its game. In 2007 they only managed a ratio of 1:25, which is admittedly better than 2002's 1:2.5, but nowhere near the target of 1:250 required to produce peace.

Finally, please be advised that peace is at hand in the middle east as a result of Pier's Akerman's column Israelis must face their own monsters.

In it, he outlines how both sides' motley collection of hardliners, right wing raving ratbags and loons need to settle down and let the moderates achieve some kind of settlement, rather than letting types like Israeli ultra-nationalist Avigdor Lieberman set the pace in negotiations with the hard men of Hamas.

Correction: Piers Akerman's column is entitled Muslims must face their own monsters, and shows that so long as sub-human, mongoloid, child hating, Islamic fundamentalist Arabs stalk the Palestinian landscape, there can be no peace. 

In his fair-minded appeal to child hating, Arab Islamic moderates, Piers throws his hat into the ring and stakes his claim for a Nobel Peace Prize. Put down your suicide bombs, you child hating moderates, and learn to love. 

The fat owl is generously making his own personally autographed - signed by Reg Livermore, John Waters and Jim Sharman -  copy of the original 1969 Festival Australian cast album of  Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical available to the peace process.

He is particularly cognizant of the lyrics of Easy to be hard:

How can people be so heartless

How can people be so cruel

Easy to be hard, easy to be cold.

How can people have no feelings

How can they ignore their friends

Easy to be proud, easy to say no

Especially people who care about strangers

Who care about evil and social injustice

Do you only care about bleeding crowd

How about a needing friend, I need a friend.

Sadly the fat owl only has rabid supporters, not quite the same as friends. So let's hear it for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Well if Henry Kissinger and Al Gore can win one, why not the fat owl?

Gerard Henderson, Historical Truth, wretched David Hare, the lies of Frost/Nixon, and the fake tits of Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities

In other news today, acclaimed columnist Gerard Henderson fiercely attacked playwright William Shakespeare for his shameless historical inaccuracies in his column Can't see the truth for the screen. (cough, that's Henderson's column, not Shakespeare's. Already with the inaccuracies).

Mr. Shakespeare's portrait of Brutus in Julius Caesar as a misguided hero of the people is patently false, and doesn't accord with Plutarch's version at all, while his account of Mark Antony is riddled with errors, Mr. Henderson said, in a vitriolic attack on playwrights who confuse fact and fiction.

As for Hamlet, it is a risible attempt to evoke significant historical events in Denmark, with so many errors and falsehoods, that it pays no respect to the people involved, nor to the sources Mr. Shakespeare clearly ripped off in his desperate attempt to conjure up a feeble entertainment, Mr. Henderson added.

I cannot begin to recount the falsehoods, egregious errors, mistakes, anomalies, discrepancies, and comedies of inventions to be found in Mr. Shakespeare's series of plays about English rulers and their courts, but I will say that they are so grievous as to constitute a grave crime against history, possibly even a war crime, Mr. Henderson noted.

When asked to respond to the attack, Mr. Shakespeare simply said They're just plays, for fok's sake, just entertainments to amuse the people in the pits. I meant no harm. He refused to comment any further.

Mr. Henderson noted that the playwright had no adequate defense for his demeaning works, and certainly the excuse that they might be art carried no weight at all.

He then went on to note that recently there has been an alarming tendency, richly deserving condemnation, for film and theatre to blur fact and fiction.

In particular, he was outraged at the number of howlers contained in Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities. He pointed out that there were a huge number of tits on show in the show, and that this rash of boobs, breasts, nips and nipples was patently in error, as people in the nineteen seventies had sex under blankets and never exposed their private parts to cameras.

Mr. Henderson additionally made reference to the opinion of Anthony Beevor, one of the leading historians in the English-speaking world, deploring the tendency of television and movie-makers to blur the border between fact and fiction to an unprecedented degree while pretending increasingly that their film is based on a true story.

One film that has particularly outraged historians is the film Fargo which opens with the line This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.

Subsequent enquiries revealed Fargo to be a farrago of lies. Not one thing in it actually happened, was true, took place in Fargo, involved real people, or involved dead people. The film-makers thought they were being funny when in fact they were being irresponsible ahistorical smartarses.

Mr. Beevor has proposed that it should be the duty of not just every scientist and historian, but also of every writer, publisher, movie-maker, TV producer and ordinary citizen to fight all attempts to exploit the ignorance and gullibility of audiences.

Mr. Henderson in particular noted the appalling portoid treatment of the truth in JFK, and the way David Hare in Stuff Happens used fact and fiction to condemn the decision of George Bush and Tony Blair to commit US and British forces to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. There are more than enough reasons to condemn Bush and Blair for their barbarity and abuse of power using historical facts, without the need of fiction, said well known historian Edward Gibbon.

Mr. Henderson also pointed out that the play and film Frost/Nixon distorted the truth, to the detriment of president Richard Nixon and the benefit of interviewer David Frost and leftist academic James Reston. (He noted that serial abuser David Hare was also involved, but is prepared to forgive Hare for the way he upset port-oids with his redemption of Nazis and Kate Winslet in The Reader).

Revealing he actually soiled his eyes by reading and referencing that notorious snake pit of leftist liberal sentiment, The Huffington Post, Mr. Henderson used an article by Elizabeth Drew (no fan of the late Republican president) to detail the many errors in Frost/Nixon, including the false folding to Frost about his participation in the Watergate building affair, and a fake late telephone conversation involving an impression Nixon was a binge drinker with memory lapses. 

Everybody knows that Nixon bombed Cambodia, authorised the Watergate affair, and destroyed the crucial part of a tape with a very clear head, and hands that never shook, said historian Manning Clark. He might have been a war criminal and a common criminal, but you could never accuse him of alcoholism.

These scenes, said Mr Henderson, are sometimes described as brilliant depictions when they are wilful fabrications, designed to defame the dead, calumnies to which there can be no reply.

He then went on to attack Screen Australia (into which Film Australia has been folded) for being given $7.5 million over three years to produce meretricious tosh like Menzies and Churchill at War, pointing out that these are not documentaries but docudramas that invent conversations and mix fiction with fact. 

It is plainly obvious, complained historian G. M. Trevelyan, that the actor chosen to play Mr. Menzies in fact looked nothing like the man but such is the dominant power of his performance that young and impressionable minds are likely to assume that this is the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth about Ming the Merciless. After all the man only wanted to ban communists, and who can complain about that?

Mr. Henderson concluded with a heartfelt plea: Certainly history is contestable. However, it is either conceit or deceit to maintain facts either do not exist or do not matter. Ask Paul Mackay.

Immediately we heard this plaintive cry for help, this yearning plea for truth and decency and justice, this blog sprang into action.

First step: there's no point that pretending that Shakespeare's many historical errors are redeemable by way of footnotes, or notes to teachers. We propose an immediate ban on his allegedly historical writings in all schools, and a ban on any public performances of his allegedly historical works. We see this as a two-fold win-win situation, since it will at once wipe much grievous nonsense from the records, and absolve students from the need to worry about this over-wordy prattling prate, his historical distortions or indeed history itself.

Secondly, more recent stuff is a bit tricky, given the power of Hollywood and local FTA broadcasters, and the shameless way the media can abuse helpless politicians with no chance of a level playing field for the pollies. This heavyweight industrial machinery, dedicated to fraud and chicanery, must however face the music of their port-oid tendencies. 

We therefore propose an immediate recall of all recent films so that they can have corrective historical subtitles inserted at appropriate places: for example, in any sex scene where an actress is purporting to represent a real person, the footnote could read: Important note: this actress's tits are bigger (or smaller) than the real person she is pretending to be be.

After we've read a hundred or so such corrections in Underbelly 2 (so many tits, so little time), ratings should plunge, thereby providing a healthy historical correction.

These footnotes will be required on all new shows, and on all old films which have ever been shown in theatres or broadcast on television, and involve allegedly historical facts (yes, right down to Bugs Bunny's racist remarks in his world war two cartoons).

All these shows will have to be recalled and refitted to a new, approved and certified level of historical fitness using subtitles or even corrective photographs and other documentation. For example, an appropriate footnote in Frost/Blair would be something like: Caution: while Michael Sheen looks a lot like Tony Blair, and that worked well in other shows, he has bugger all resemblance to David Frost, who looked more like this at the time (show photograph).

Sure it'll be a big job, but that's no excuse. Hollywood film-makers are a tiresome bunch of trading off wankers, who think history is only useful if it's entertainment, and who go on making all kinds of shows that celebrate aliens, angels, and Christian ways of thinking. This metaphysical delusionary nonsense has to be stopped. We even wonder whether such frivolous entertainment might be banned altogether, so that readings of the works of Mr. Henderson (by a plain actor dressed in plain puritan black against a simple black background drop) can be read aloud on the televisual medium for the edification, information and heartfelt correction of the public.

There's a lot to be said for the banning of films, plays, the theatre, music and other frivolous works of entertainment which seek refuge in the tired old saw that they are somehow art. Perhaps hands could reach out across oceans, and the Taliban could find renewal by working with Mr. Henderson on this fine cause, this epic project. Truth before art, historical objectivity and factual accuracy before relativist modernism, and death before dishonor.

Finally we have to report a few gremlins in this report. Apparently there are some dead historians in this piece who didn't say what they are purported to have said, and it is also profoundly untrue that Bill Shakespeare based his portrait of Polonius in Hamlet on close observation of Mr. Henderson's mannerisms. There is a gap of some four hundred years involved, and a detailed examination of director Robert Zemeckis's cheap time travel device suggests that in fact Mr. Shakespeare at no time came forward to the present time before whizzing back to the past to write up his caricature.

Coming next week to a cinema near you: see sanctimonius claptrap taken to a new level, hear stentorian nonsense spoken at one hundred and thirty decibels, watch as history is re-worked into a patchwork of quilted lies, gasp as the whole tawdry basis of the entertainment industry is shown to be based on an abuse of history, marvel at the newly corrected, entirely accurate, historically relevant and excitingly naked tits on view in this week's episode of Underbelly 2.

Disclaimer: while this blog is based in part upon a true story, certain characters and names have been changed, some characters have been composited or invented and a number of incidents fictionalised. Any similarity to any name, character or history of actual persons living or dead other than those portrayed and depicted herein is entirely coincidental and unintentional, and even those real characters depicted herein might have no basis in reality either. You decide.

Jeremy Sear, Jonathan Green, Pure Poison and Purer Pussies

Pure Poison, the new Crikey blog ostensibly dedicated to weeding out intellectual dishonesty, is clearly being run by a bunch of pure pussies.

March 2nd comes this from Jeremy Sear: We unreservedly withdraw any allegation that Tim (Blair) has been using the 'WB' identity, that he had personally used this identity to artificially boost his 'hits', and apologise for any offence caused by the above.

March 2nd comes this from Jonathan Green under the header Things we shouldn't have said about Andrew Bolt: The first thing is to apologise, sincerely, to Andrew Bolt. The second, to acknowledge the traps for the unwary in tapping too innocently into Web2 interconnectivity.

Along with this comes a comments code, purloined from The Guardian (did they pay money for the intellectual property rights?) and a fatuous statement of policy: ... we will try where we can to weed out not just the vexatious and insulting, but also the frivolous and time wasting. We want to run comment ... we welcome utterly that opportunity for instant, robust and accessible discussion, but we want it where possible to enrich understanding of the topic, not just flitter by in the empty, rapidly created, hot white noise of the internet. We think that novelty has worn off.

Game, set and match to Blair and Bolt. They'll be dining out for weeks on the way they've made Green and Sear eat humble pie, and introduce a comments code that makes them sound like Aunt Martha and Uncle Ernie are their target audience.

Guys, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Half the point of the intertubes is frivolous time wasting and a chance to let off therapeutic steam (that's why Crooks and Liars has a nice late evening music clip and an open discussion for late night owls who just want to vent, but then they have an actual community). 

If I went to blogs only for enriching understanding, I'd have been reduced to a gibbering baboon in short order long ago.

Take a look at your rivals. They're entertainers. They don't mind being clowns because they're doing a bit of toe tapping to amuse the faithful. They're satirical, or so they think, and funny, so they think, and they throw in funny jokes about polar bears and monkeys (especially monkeys, especially monkeys). They love a good Islamic beheading. They dance on the graves of greenies and portie-thinkers and portly Al Gore.

Guys, guys you sound like feeble, poncy gits. Jeremy Sear even ends up saying that they're still going to hold Blair and Bolt to account, and that they're not going anywhere, then closes his mini-defiant rave with a begging message - "I'm still waiting for a reply to my Saturday email, Andrew."

Well that little experiment didn't last long did it? Why are port-ish types so bloody useless? I suppose it's Stockholm syndrome and they don't know any better, but frankly Patty Hearst was a heck of a lot more interesting.

Over at Tim Blair's blog (sorry I can't handle Andrew Bolt) in typical cunning fashion he just provides a link to a disciple on another blog who does a hatchet job on Jeremy, so in another typical manoeuvre he can let loose the rabid hounds in the comments section. 

And his baseball bat wielding supporters do their usual tricks - shame on you for suggesting Sear is some sort of low-life scumbag is just one opening variation on the when did you stop bashing your wife routine. Then there's the obligatory reference to stalking and Jezza entering a downward spiral of bitterness after the divorce and guessing Jeremy's chronological emotional age is around 15, not to mention name calling like prats and trolls and unhinged leftoids (portoids in our new regime) and Hemp Panty Collective.

Guys, guys, you're down in the gutter with loons. Drivel is all they understand, drivel and name calling is all they need. Don't give us sanctimonious claptrap about dignfied understanding and dignified debate and an awareness of real issues in our time. You're not going to change them, and you're only going to allow them to crack out the champagne by cravenly doffing your lids to the lords of the manor. These guys are as close to Toad from Toad Hall you're ever likely to meet, and they'll always think of you as stoats and weasels and ferrets. That's the way it goes in Wind in the Willows and that's the way it goes on the intertubes.

I'm still waiting on your email Andrew!!! Sorry guys, I just wanted to puke when I read that. It's worse than star-fucking - this kind of aberrant fixation on Blair and Bolt - if that's how you're going to behave.

What, you think you're going to sit down over a nice hot cup of tea, and a well-buttered scone and sort out the world with Tim and Andrew. That's as silly an idea as thinking Bettina Arndt is going to fix up sexual issues in Australian marriages.

These guys are loons. They cry out to other loons, and the chances are good the other loons will respond to them. Frank Zappa had it right:

(Cheesey, Cheesey)
(This is a song about vegetables, they keep ya regular
They're real good for you)

Call any vegetable 

Call it by name
Call one today 

When you get off the train
Call any vegetable 

And the chances are good
Aw, the vegetable will respond to you

(Some people don't go for prunes...I
don't know, I've always found that if they...)
Call any vegetable 

Pick up your phone
Think of a vegetable 

Lonely at home
Call any vegetable 

And the chances are good
That a vegetable will respond to you

Rutabaga, Rutabaga,
Rutabaga, Rutabaga,
Rutabay-y-y-y...

(A prune isn't really a vegetable...
CABBAGE is a vegetable...)

No one will know
If you don't want to let them know
No one will know
'Less it's you that might tell them so
Call and they'll come to you
Covered with dew
Vegetables dream, 

Of responding to you

Standing there shiny and proud by your side
Holding your hand while the neighbors decide
Why is a vegetable something to hide?

Paul Sheehan, Bettina Arndt, Sexology, Filthy Feminists and Sexy Stepford Wives

As the leaves sear yellow at the start of autumn, and the abundant grapes melt under the beaks of our local Indian mynah birds, I thought now was as good a time as any to contemplate with satisfaction our legislative agenda for loon pond these next few months.

(1) The removal of all gum trees from this fair land, to be replaced by concrete, tar, car parks and malls;

(2) The removal of all greenies and lefties to Tasmania where they can dwell amongst the remaining trees, and perhaps get burnt off in a fire storm or two;

(3) The banning of the bikini (people wearing thongs to be arbitrarily shot);

(4) The killing of all sharks, and their conversion to flake so that fish and chips will be abundant throughout the land;

(5) The lifting of any and all speeding fines on lead footed right wing newspaper columnists, while there's to be triple points for anyone identifying as left;

(6) The setting up of a Royal Commission to identify anyone claiming bushfire charity while uninsured. We're still not sure whether we should bring back the stocks for this offence, or whether simply converting Telstra stadium to a gulag is the best way forward;

(7) The declaration of compassionate conservatism as the ruling philosophy throughout the land, and anyone who doesn't like it to be given given a good flogging with a cat o' nine tails. A Botany Bay dozen should set most people straight, but I think it wise to reserve hanging for recalcitrants. Maybe we should also think about bringing back the irons for self-declared lefties incapable of reform?

I have no doubt by year's end, inspired by the wondrous insights of the denizens of loon pond, that we'll have a good dozen initiatives that'll set this land straighter than a die.

There's no doubt there's a new vigor for justice and right thinking as we chafe under the administration of that toxic bore and dullard Kevin Rudd. Clearly feminism is also a problem, quite likely the explanation for everything that has gone wrong these last fifty years in this fair country, but it's not quite clear yet from reading the runes as to what's the best policy option.

Banning all women from work, school, university, and public activity is a trifle extreme, as is the thought that we need some kind of clothing to hide their shame and their lustful bodies from the world, but I've no doubt that Archbishop Pell will provide insights into the best way to bring back nuns' clothing and nunneries.

Meantime, we can rely on Paul Sheehan to snipe away as he celebrates Bettina Arndt's new book, The Sex Diaries, by describing her as "a professional thorn in the side of feminist victimology for many years" in his column Winning war with bedroom battles.

Funnily enough, we remember Arndt from her earlier days on Australian Forum, where she took a different view of the world, before leering off into other kinds of sexology, and an almost redemptive, fetishistic desire to celebrate men over women. (We like to call it male victimology but that's the kind of bitch we is - it seemed to happen around the time she got hitched).

Chameleons have got nothing on the changing ideas of Arndt, which contribute a lot of public heat but very little light in understanding relationships, sex, men and women, and a lot of cliches in search of substance (you know, like "bedroom battles", such a core term in discussing domestic harmony).

Sheehan offers a potted summary of Arndt's new book, and it seems clear that married sex is a disaster, part of that 'bedroom battle' for dominance and supremacy, in which women go off the boil and men miss out. Based on a massive survey of 98 couples, thereby ensuring that statistical relevance is not an issue.

It seems Arndt doesn't mind affairs - no sex, feel free to play - and then doesn't believe in confession of the sin - telling doesn't fix things, it just adds to things. So commit the crime, and don't do the time. Sounds good. A healthy, hearty basis for trust in a relationship.

Funnily enough Sheehan then goes on to mention how men adopt silence as a way of dealing with the death of lust in their wives. Well. you would. wouldn't you. if all you've got to say is how you fucked the secretarial help in the office, or carried on a brutish affair with a nymphet from sales. Silence is golden.

But it seems when women get mad as hell about being sex deprived, they get angry - four out of ten female diarists with stronger sex drives than their partners upped and left the relationship during the time of the study (what's that you say, "The numbers are too small for any real conclusion". But what the heck, let's do it anyway, these uppity women upped and left when confronted with an unfulfilling sex life, while many of the male diarists were just putting up and shutting up. Noble men, flibberty gibbet women).

So it's on to a bit about chemistry being cruel, a bit about groping and a joke about foreplay to wrap up proceedings.

My conclusion from this superficial, flimsy report from the trenches on the battle of the sexes? Sheehan doesn't have a clue, but we can elucidate a new campaign point:

(8) Feminists must be burnt at the stake, as was sensibly and piously done with the witches of Salem (that'll learn them about victimology), while a campaign to convert married women into Stepford wives must begin immediately. I can see a new ministry for the federal government - the Ministry for maligned men and submissive women - who can immediately begin conditioning women to return to the nineteen fifties, where they lay in bed and did their duty for god, queen and country.

So much to learn from the loons, and now so much to do to save the country. Remember one step at a time, but every step is an important step as we re-make this country into an endless re-run of Little House on the Prairie.

Janet Albrechtsen, Compassionate Conservatism Part II, the Irresponsible and Heartfelt Charity

A few days after Janet Albrechtsen wrote about compassionate conservatism, and the way tough love can be a hard sell, she goes into print on the subject of recent bushfire victims with the line Stop bailing out the irresponsible.

It is tempting to dole out taxpayer dollars payouts to those hit by brutal fires. Images of people who have lost their homes are powerful. Yet, it makes no sense to encourage people to look to government for help when things go wrong rather than take responsibility by insuring their homes.

That's right. Look to the compassionate insurance companies. Maybe Albrechtsen's never got into a full on fight with an insurance company about a claim, and experienced their full blown compassion?

And I guess insurance premiums are easy peasy for one of Rupert's lackeys?

As usual, it's the private sector, darwinian survival rant from Albrechtsen:

Whan (NSW Emergency Services Minister Steve Whan) is wrong to mistake heartfelt charity for ill-conceived government policy. It is only right that people have donated in droves. Bu it is wrong for government policy to encourage people to take the path of irresponsibility knowing that that others will bail them out. That is not heartless. That is common sense, a commodity often in scarce supply when you entrust governments to spend your money wisely and fairly.

Whan had the temerity to suggest that people donated generously to the bushfire victims without thinking about whether recipients might be insured.

Thank the good lord Janet's compassionate conservatism has put me right. For a moment there I was thinking blindly about the joy of christian giving. Now I've decided to demand a statutory declaration from any likely recipient (the assignor of the first part to the assignee of the second part) that they have in fact taken out insurance, and will in fact be able to refund my cash flowed contribution, with a market rate of interest I've decided to generously discount by a half a point against prime.

This is sensible, rational charity - there's a real point to the giving (since it will boomerang to me) and what's more recipients will appreciate the value of the money on loan to them. I've decided Shylock in The Merchant of Venice is the best guide - he clearly has the best legal argument, and he's much more to the point than that dopey Portia (even her name sounds like a soapy character).

You might think it heartless, but I tend to think of it as prudent common sense. In the old days, it would have been called screw you, just in case you might screw me.

I've decided to extend this principle to people without jobs (since being unemployed is both careless and irresponsible), to anyone dependent on religious charities (since believing in the power of a mythical redeemer is both irresponsible and stupid), anyone in a car crash (since they are likely to have been driving badly in the manner of a Blair or a Duffy by speeding) and anyone who crosses the street and looks at me in a funny way (since they are likely to be both careless and deserving of a good punch in the mush).

Indeedy, it occurs to me that heartfelt charity of any kind is for the birds, since any bugger in need of it has clearly been either careless or irresponsible. Now I'm all the way with the common sense compassionate conservatives. Run the buggers over!

"Hey buddy can you spare a dime?" Fuck you, you careless, irresponsible dumb fuck. Go live in a tent. Or learn to take out insurance.

As for you, you useless street drunks, go drink your grog, go die in a rubbish dump somewhere and see if I care ...

Yeay, compassionate conservatism is fun. Hey Janet, spend a dime on The Australian? No way, go get yourself a corkscrew and shove it wherever you think it might be most useful ... 

I mean that in the most careful, responsible, concerned, and considerate way imaginable of course. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely coherently cogently compassionate. It's just that tough love is - amazingly, disturbingly - sometimes a really hard sell ...

I rushed off to the New Testament to check and sure enough:

When you give in charity, never blow a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and streets in order that their praises may be sung by men. I solemnly tell you that they already have their reward. But when you are giving in charity, let not your left hand perceive what your right hand is doing that your charities may be in secret; and then your Father - He who sees in secret - will recompense you.

And when you are giving in charity, make sure the left hand confirms that those due to receive have exercised due diligence and taken proper insurance, and you will be rewarded by your Father who is in Heaven, because no recompense or charity is required, for those who have been careful and righteous are totally all right jack, while those who reach out with the grasping right hand, who have not been diligent or prayerful, are not in any case deserving of any charity at all. Not a penny, a cent or a brass nickel.

Funny, there it is, right before the Lord's Prayer in Matthew. And I'd forgotten it! Janet was right! What an inspiration she is!

Malcolm Fraser, the world economy, tedium, boredom and surpassing boredom

Here at loon corner we have a special fondness for former politicians suffering from relevancy deprivation syndrome, who turn to column writing to re-connect to the world.

Inevitably they fail, because the utter tedium of their time running some wild-eyed political regime is matched or exceeded by the utter tedium of their writing.

Every so often, an extraordinary example of the breed, with tattered plumage and a downcast air, takes to the stage. Come on down Malcolm Fraser, the man who came to power by the most devious and repellent means, and has made us suffer his redemptive guilt ever since.

Of course these days people have forgotten the dismissal - maintain the rage, as a general rule only lasts a day or two - and luckier still for Malcolm, most people have forgotten his time at the helm between the years 1975 to 1983.

Suffice to say it was an undistinguished reign, and so we have to ask why anybody would bother to pay attention to what he now has to say in his dotage.

But the vein of squatterdom runs deep in Victoria, and not surprisingly The Age has decided to bore its Sunday readership with Malcolm's The global economy needs a makeover.

In it Malcolm reveals himself as a full-blown Keynesian with a healthy Nixonian respect for China and the role it can play. No wonder the Liberals in the state gnash their teeth - if they can manage to stay awake - whenever the kraken awakes.

There's actually nothing to report, content wise, in Malcolm's column. It purports a substantial, solemn, sober - which is to say immensely dull - review of the history of the world economy in fifteen hundred words or so.

The solutions he proposes are a carbon copy of what others have been saying with more clarity, force and sense this past year - dear ex-leader Malcolm urges that much needs to be done in terms of financial market supervision within countries and worldwide, and extra penalties and so on. Even the way he grates on Liberals and free marketers with this idle chatter isn't sufficient reward for wading through the turgid prose.

He also seeks a new and appropriate role for the IMF, urging on Japan and China as having the necessary surpluses and resources to bail out the world from recession (it seems to have escaped him that Japan is in full blown depression, and is something of a basket case, but hey who cares about details).

As a corollary, Malcolm prescribes some economic cod liver oil for the Americans.

But that was always Malcolm's way, while I've always thought life was in fact meant to be sleazy.

Funnily enough, newspapers wonder why their readership is diminishing, but their only hope with this kind of column is that readers nod off before they can remember to get indignant and demand their money back. What's the point of reading (and paying for) a Western districts aristocrat, so that we can all marvel that he still lives, breathes and writes for The Age?

Some think Malcolm should be forgiven the tedium he induces, for the way he irritates the shit out of neo-cons, and it's true he does perform some kind of service. But it's a limited one, and not redemptive enough. He was a bore before he came to power, a preening pontificating prat who loved the sound of his own voice, then a bore when in power who made other head prefects look like caring chappies, and now out of power a super bore, with a drone-like resonance that produces a hypnotic trance in any innocent who strays into his path.

You have to suspect that his fate is the fate of many on the neo con side. A lust for tainted power, and then an unseemly and untimely amount of guilt and repentance, making us suffer as they suffer.

As a political tragedy, Fraser lacks the scope and hubris of Nixon, and instead he plays out like a really bad antipodean version of a Chekhov play, with innocent bystanders uncertain as to whether he's playing a menshevik or a bolshevik in his new guise as caring patrician.

Is it better never to have had political power, and therefore always to have been irrelevant, or to be at the centre of the storm, and then get washed up on the beach like a piece of driftwood boring the sand with chit chat about the state of the world? The challenge is to make it through Malcolm's musings so you can cast a vote on the question.

And at least he's a new distraction, because over at the Sunday Terror Piers Akerman aka the fat owl weighs into Queensland Labor and Anna Bligh, and given this is a government that learnt all its tricks with Peter Beatty sitting in the lap and sucking the teat of the corrupt Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, it's hard not to just say 'meh' and care less about the whole storm in a teacup of Queensland politics. I guess it's better the fat owl is writing about land sharks rather than sea sharks, but that's about the only discernible benefit, since as always he's horrid and beastly for all the wrong reasons (well with a heading like Labor's lost ladies, you can sense the tone and the style he brings to the piece).

Meanwhile loonatic gadfly Tim Blair keeps on thinking he's being satirical about left wingers, little realizing that in fact he's turned into his very own kind of Gilbert and George. Only there were two of them, and there's just one of him, so the ongoing dialogue he has with himself, to his own eminent and obvious self-satisfaction, suggests schizophrenia is the only sensible, viable way forward.

Blair's latest contribution to peace in the Middle East is a hate-filled rant, but that hardly surprises or shocks anyone (but it's so tedious I can't be bothered to link to it). 

Still if you want a healthy corrective you might want to read the rootin' and tootin', fightin' and shootin' Christopher Hitchens' take on the current power grab of the right in Israeli politics, available at Slate (and presumably his own eponymous site) entitled Avigdor Lieberman's Chutzpah, with a sub header The right to return cannot confer the right to expel. 

It conjures up the madness of the middle east and the Israeli predicament in particular, while Blair just likes to throw in some red hot chili pepper and keep the madness bubbling along. There's always two sides to a story, but Blair the schizophrenic strangely only ever manages one. Does that make him the world's first monomaniacal schizophrenic?

So it goes on a quiet day in loon pond, with the pagan ritual of Mardi Gras just around the corner. Now that's sure to bring the loons out, squawking and flapping, so we look forward to the new week with joy and hope ...

(Below: Gilbert and George presciently evoke Tim Blair's potty mouth)