The inestimable Tim Dunlop and I were having coffee together a few months back and discussing internet trolls, the dangers of comments and how to run a successful website.

He has years of experience in dealing with trolls, and in running successful blogs where the comments section turns into a community and a forum for lively debate. His advice to me was that we should get rid of comments on the articles and just have a letters page to give a voice to people who feel particularly strongly about any given issue.

There's been a bit of screeching in the blogosphere about police brutality at the OccupyMelbourne protests. It's not something I can comment on, I wasn't there, but humans being what they are, it's not impossible to believe that not everyone there was perfectly rational and well behaved.

The only dealings I've ever had with the police is trying to talk my way out of yet another speeding fine (failed) having them scare the bejezus out of me when I was 13 and got caught shoplifting with friends from school (grounded for decades, but no charges) and the time I got pulled over for a roadworthy check in my first car (when I opened the bonnet the horn went off and wouldn't stop - I saw the funny side, they didn't).

I'm not unusual, most of us don't ever have much more contact than that with police, so reading about them spraying poor dumb hippies with capsicum spray at an otherwise peaceful, if slightly directionless protest, can easily colour our perceptions of an organisation we don't really know very well.

3:47am: Sit bolt upright in bed groping around for bellows. Stare around darkened bedroom trying to work out why am not using bellows to inflate the bean bag that Hilary Clinton is shouting at me to fix while the tiger roars in agreement.

3:49: Lie back down and listen to roaring noise of husband snoring.

4:03: Nudge husband gently. Listen to husband grunt and resume stentorian snoring.

4:10: Kick husband viciously on shins. Rub throbbing foot, listen to husband grunt and resume stentorian snoring.

4:15: Decide trip to bathroom might fix things. Slide out of bed and step on whippet curled up on top of dressing gown. Wrestle dressing gown out from under whippet, step on whippet again and stagger out to hallway. Step on other whippet lying across hallway. Turn on hallway light and glare at whippets, whippets look reproachfully back at self and follow self to bathroom. Try not to feel self-conscious as whippets sit and gaze fixedly at self on toilet.

4:18: Return to bed and pummel snoring husband. Husband turns face into pillow, and says “Touch me again dickhead and I’ll ram that fucking pen up your arse”.

"Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear."
Naomi Klein

Australians are richer, freer, healthier, better educated and safer than any community in the history of humanity, which makes logical that the politics of fear work much better on us than the politics of hope - we have a lot to lose and not much left to gain.

Historically, our national fears have often been focused on immigration. Starting with the population boom during the gold rush years, which was the first time immigrants included people from anywhere other than Britain, we have wept and wailed and wrung our hands over how the {insert racial pejorative here} are going to Ruin Our Way of Life.

Ever since the vagaries of politics put Andrew Wilkie into a position where he could insist on gambling reforms, Clubs Australia and their oleaginous spokesman Andrew Ball have being trying out various bullshit campaigns to convince us that the reforms are a Bad Scary Thing. Every campaign they’ve run crashes up against a wall of facts and logic because the only truth to their fear of the reforms is that they are trying desperately to protect their own profits.

Clubs Australia’s latest scare campaign is that gambling reforms will cost jobs.  It’s yet another emotive claim, designed to whip up fear and anger, which has no actual basis in fact.

Reducing gambling to a solely recreational pastime might reduce the number of jobs in the gambling industry, but it does not mean that the total jobs and money in the economy will shrink – quite the opposite.

Popped my being-on-the-radio cherry this morning, with the help of the RRR Breakfasters.

As you can tell from the shaky voice, I was kinda nervous, just before we started I looked at the microphone and suddenly forgot how to speak English. The Breakfasters were awesome though, they helped me through it and I only did one swear.

So, for anyone who missed it, here’s what will hopefully be the first of many media plugs for the Tribune.

 

The slapfest is ON.

It started on Monday. Glenn Milne rehashed some old rumours about Prime Minister Julia Gillard that predate her joining parliament. The “crime” supposedly committed by Gillard was to share a house with her then partner that was allegedly bought with stolen union funds. According to Milne, this calls into question not just Gillard’s judgement but also her integrity – this despite the fact that Gillard had no knowledge of any ill doing.

I went to the Melbourne Writers Festival panel on political journalism this morning, because if Lindsay Tanner, Samantha Maiden, Jay Rosen and Greg Jericho are prepared to spend an hour talking about what is working and what isn’t in political journalism now, I want to listen to it.

More on what they actually said later (if I can find the time) but, on a totally unrelated matter, something happened that shouldn't rate a mention, but also really should.

Samantha Maiden walked out on stage with a baby draped over her shoulder. It was obviously a very young baby and a remarkable placid one, who slept though most of the discussion. When he/she woke a little, Maiden just started feeding and carried on with her speech.

News Flash, folks: there are shitheads in the world. Some of them are rich, some of them are poor, they come from every race and religion and creed and culture imaginable, and thousands of them spent last week being shitheads all over the UK.

Remember that long-suffering Amazon Indian dude that Sting used to drag all over the world with him to bolster his claims of being important? I bet while he sat there looking dignified and bewildered at yet another presser, he was thinking to himself "I wonder if Tkatl's stolen my fucking cooking pot again".

Some of you may have noticed that things have been quiet here at Casa Del Tribune lately. Too quiet.

About June this year we hit the wall that so many indie publications hit, the how-do-we-pay-for-this wall. And we hit it with an almighty crash. We were too small to attract big advertisers and too big to get the small ones. Printing costs were not huge, but it was too high for us to finance ourselves and there was no way to get anyone else to pay for publication of a free magazine.

So, what to do?

After about an hour of the Murdochs' committee appearance the other night I was just about ready to stick knitting needles through my own eardrums.

There was a great deal of comedy value in Rupert's Abe Simpson impersonation on several levels. For one thing, it was funny watching an old man trying not to nod off, and looking for all the world as if he was just missing an ear-trumpet, and about to yell "get off my lawn".

If ever I need proof that each generation is softer than the last I think of this: When my grandfather was my age he was pushing back the Japanese in the pacific. When my father was my age he was eating dangerous amounts of sugar in order to fail his medical for serving in Vietnam. And when I was my age, as I now am, I survived the great planking epidemic of 2011.

The Australian International Motor Show has returned to Melbourne this year.

I love the Motor Show, for it brings all the glitz and glamour of the car industry to our fair town, and I love motors. In Cars. This was also the first year that I was granted media access which meant that I was able to enter before the general public. Unfortunately, my actual place of employment decided that I had to attend work that day and so I turned up later than I wished. This was unfortunate but on the up side most of my fellow motoring hacks had left for the day, giving me better access to the PRs; most of them had shed their formal frocks and were happy to talk in their more casual attire.

For the past few weeks our Australian public channels SBS and ABC have been on an emotional roll, with three stories that chilled the bones of their audience. 4 Corners investigated bullying and sexual abuse in the military, followed up with a report on the cruel conditions in the Malaysian abattoirs that process Australian cattle and SBS also used the reality TV show format to put ‘6 ordinary Australians’ through a re-enactment of the asylum seeker journey.

On face value, contrary to the criticism the media have been regularly coping for their addiction to “sideshows”, as denounced by former minister Lindsay Tanner, these documentaries did not shy away from addressing unglamorous social and political issues. The programs appear to have scored high ratings, they prompted copious commentaries on the online channels and the consternation they triggered has been relayed by mainstream media.

I’ve been working from home for a while now, which, apart from turning me into a deranged shut-in, at least means that I don’t need to catch public transport anymore. This is A Good Thing, because if twitter is to be believed (and I think we know that it is) Melbourne’s trams and trains are full of farty, shouty people, constantly whacking each other with handbags, using “like” as a preposition* and burping dim sims and fermented yak’s milk into the air conditioning.

Yes, I’m very happy to give trams a miss; on the other hand, trams are probably quite glad to be giving me a miss too.

As regular readers of my drivel may know, I’m prone to idiotic pratfalls, usually they’re entertaining for the people around me. Usually…

A few years ago I was working in Collins St and used to catch the No 67 tram down Swanston St. Trams, with their jerky start/stop thing, are difficult for everyone and I like to believe I’m not the only one who regularly ended up sprawled like an inebriated giraffe on the floor, which explains why we all elbow our way past old ladies and pregnant women to get to the last remaining seat.

Wearing cream coloured pants can be dangerous, not just a you-might-end-up-looking-like-a-very-large-biscuit kind of dangerous, I’m talking about a you-can-never-ever-go-anywhere-where-there-are-humans-ever-again kind of dangerous.

However, if you decide to defy the risk and wear cream coloured pants on your day off and you decide to start your day with a nice latte, you should always, always, AWLAYS check the seats at the café before you sit down. Otherwise you might fail to notice the not quite solidified coffee some evil bastard carefully spread over on the chair just before you got there.

You might sit for a while on what you think is just a very cold metal chair. Then you might finish you coffee and saunter off to do some shopping. You might even be feeling a little bit good about yourself and your life at this point. And why wouldn’t you? You’re not at work, you’re not caffeine deprived. You’re about to buy ALL the things, what’s not to feel good about?

Unsightly brown stains on your bottom, that’s what.

The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), their spokeswoman Wendy Francis and the Rip & Roll campaign for safe sex in the homosexual community gave us a fascinating media blip yesterday. ACL’s actions, in particular, were an eye opener in a number of ways.

Firstly, it demonstrated that ACL, despite their stupidity, can be devilishly clever. They didn’t bother protesting directly to QAHC or Rip & Roll, they went straight to the people whose only skin in the game was financial – Adshel. They knew that any direct complaints to Rip & Roll would have been met with the scoffs they deserved; they knew that protesting to government would take too long and they knew that attempting to create a public backlash would be doomed to failure. Adshel, on the other hand, have to be very careful about being responsible for ads the public find offensive.

Slutwalk Melbourne. Read my thoughts on it here. Or not. Up to you really. But the photos are pretty cool, huh?

Did you know there's a Facebook campaign to get The Bolt Report off the air? The plan is to note who advertises on the show, then write to them threatening to boycott their product unless they withdraw their support for Das Bolt.

Going by the first edition, I don't think that will be necessary; the ratings will see him back begging The Insiders for his bi-weekly $800 appearance within a month.

It's not that it's a bad or nasty show (although it was both those things) it was just frigging dull.

His choice of Boat People as topic for his opening monologue was as predictable as what he had to say: the usual "post hoc, ergo procter hoc" assumptions, for one thing. Ignoring the fact that over 90% of asylum seekers are found to be genuine refugees and telling us that they come here for the lifestyle, not in fear for their lives, and of course faux compassion for all the drowned scumbags victims, as a result of the evil people smugglers' response to the ALP's weak border control policies.

I didn’t watch the royal wedding, not because I’m a rabid anti monarchist or a hater of inbred gits (I’m not). I just had somewhere better to be.

I took my 11 year old daughter out for dinner and then we went to see the Indigo Girls do their last Australian concert.

Drugs are bad and punishment for bad things is good and if you try to tell me anything else I’m going to sit in a corner with my eyes squeezed shut and my fingers in my ears singing Lalalalalala at the top of my voice.

Last night’s QandA was predictably uninteresting. It comletely failed to come to grips with the results of the NSW election, with all members of the panel gluing their toes to the party lines, typical “those other bastards hate everything lovely and nice, but the Australian people understand that we are the only ones who like lovely nice things.” Yawn.

A quick skim over the top of a few middle eastern issues brought us to the last five minutes  which was a whiff of what QandA was supposed to be.

I’m a little ambivalent about government regulation of supposedly harmful behaviour. Having a glass of wine, a chocolate biscuit or even a cigarette can be damaging to my health, but it’s a choice I want to make, not one I want thrust upon me by a po-faced government committee determined to denude my life of all risk.

On the other hand, the gambling industry’s calculated manipulation of human weakness for financial gain is distasteful, to say the least. And, at this point in time, it’s almost completely unregulated, with all the protection being given to those least in need of it.

Somewhere between the two is the will o’ the wisp happy medium, the point that’s just enough to annoy the yay sayers, without in any way placating the nay sayers.

Well I've waited several hours now for the Green/Left/ALP/intelligentsia hivemind of Australian media to do its mandatory hatchet job and character assassination of Tony Abbott for his part in today's glorious People's Revolt, but to no avail.

Crabbe, Oakes, Grattan, Keane et al must be sipping chardonnay and preaching Groupthink to the beardists at #ACTwonkdrinks instead of fulfilling their obligation to push today's government talking point.

So here I am.

Seriously.

My long-term fans will be well aware that, after Demetriou, my next-favourite shouting topic is the Melbourne Grand Prix, and given that it starts this week, I think a bit of a yell is due.

I've been twice, with a AAA lanyard, which, dear peasants, is the ONLY way to go, but that's not really saying much. Wandering into marquees and watching hair-plugged mid-level execs spilling their drinks as they desperately try to chat up off-duty grid girls is fun for a while, as is strolling around The Paddock" (the area behind the pits) and seeing Michael Schumacher eating an apple. If you forget about free drinks, there are only two reasons to go to the Grand Prix, and they are both loud noises.

We saw yet another excellent example of linkbait in this brilliantly ambiguous headline "Labor Shredding its Secrets",  that appeared last weekend in one of the unsatisfactory publications that passes for a journal of record in Sydney.

The ability to know that a headline will draw in both the informed and uninformed - but will elicit the biggest reaction from the uninformed - is a key skill of the Tele’s editorial staff, who all appear to have trained as the hucksters at the door of a carnival.

In the beginning, Q and A was unmissable TV. The panel format wasn’t new, but with the gravitas provided by the ABC and Tony Jones, the quality of guests was unprecedented. Then, when the Twitter feed turned it into one of the most interactive hours of Australian television, Q and A was hovering on the edge of something truly ground breaking.

Over the last few months of 2010 though, Q and A has fell into a narcissistic pool of its own publicity and became a parody of itself. Where it used to foster discussion, it now manufactures outrage and judges its success on the number, not the content or quality, of tweets and comments it generates.

I want to punch Mark Riley for being such a grub that he picked yesterday of all days to play Gotcha with Tony Abbott over a comment made to some soldiers several months ago.

I want to punch Tony Abbott for his reaction to Riley, which showed that he simply does not have the brain power, intelligent as he is, to overcome his anger and answer a simple question when he's under pressure.

I want to punch Julia Gillard for spending so long saying, standing for, and being nothing, that when she finally shows some humanity by breaking down when speaking of individual heroes and victims of the Queensland floods it seems valid to question whether she was sincere.

Apparently there was a show on SBS last night about vaccination, which I refused to watch, or let Justin watch, because no-one needs that kind of rage on a Tuesday night. But I did get into a bit of a general sharing on Twitter about the monumental and dangerous stupidity of people who refuse to vaccinate their children. The lovely @BronwynHinz posted a link on Twitter and Facebook to this article which completely debunks the vaccination-causes-autism idiocy. It was shared and retweeted countless times, as it has been before.

There are still a few dickheads out there who enjoy their stupidity too much to stop endangering their own and other people’s children, but humanity is not, generally speaking, as moronic as it seems, and far more people are convinced by common sense than you would believe if you read the Herald Sun.

I dragged my 41 year old arse to the Big Day Out on Sunday, and it was awesome (the Big Day Out, that is, not my arse).

I saw the bands I wanted to see, I didn’t have a beer, I stayed hydrated, avoided sunburn, and I got within about a hundred metres of Tool. I marvelled at the dark comedy and completely over the top pyrotechnics of Rammstein, and I wished, despite the fact that he’s still brilliant, that I’d seen Iggy front The Stooges thirty years ago.

The 21st Century has seen and will continue to see business-model changes on a truly Galactic scale. Old ways of doing things will disappear before you can say “iSnack 2.0!!” new models will appear and entire new industries will spring into life from nothing, like Daryl Somers in reverse.

The gay marriage debate puzzles me, in the ways that so many of these kinds of debates puzzle me: everyone seems to be arguing about the wrong things.

The arguments against it seem to consist of the idea that if God and John Howard decreed that marriage doesn’t include same sex couples it must be true; and that children need a mother and a father, and any move to allow gay marriage will somehow result in Australian primary schools all turning into a replay of Lord of the Flies.

The Age generally leaves the scare campaigns to its little tabloid friend, but, well, there’s an election on this weekend, so the broadsheet has to create some kind of sales-or-clicks-generating buzz around itself.

They didn’t used to have to do this, having a stable of journalists and editors who did journalist and editor type stuff, like digging up stories and writing them in a fashion that didn’t leave the reader at risk of an aneurism or burnt fingers after setting fire to the paper in disgust.

Dear Mr Kennett,

You can always be relied on to have something inflammatory yet vaguely sensible about football, politics, or the weather. Having ruled the state with an iron fist wrapped in an iron glove for so many years, and involved yourself in the odd federal fracas (One can’t help but love you for that recorded phone conversation with Andrew Peacock back in the eighties).

I was sitting at a table last night with a group of left wing leftist leftys, and had to fess up to one of them that I am, in fact, a monarchist.

He drew his skirts aside in horror and may have briefly considering stabbing me with his fork, but I think in the end, he just decided that I was pulling his leg and started talking to someone who could make actually funny jokes.

It’s true though, I am a monarchist; in the sense that I do not think we should overthrow the queen and install an Australian presidency, not in any way where I am particularly interested in who they marry or what they say to each other on the telephone.

When I flew to London some years ago, it was at short notice, and I was therefore subject to a large degree of suspicion from the baboons, because obviously a terrorist is going to draw attention to himself by paying extra to get his passport in 48 hours, paying extra for a flight to London, and yelling "FUCK" in a very helpful fashion every time a baboon questioned him about his motives for going to London.

Is anyone actually surprised by this? Come on, really? Are you trying to tell me that you really really really thought the federal government would actually come up with a policy and act on it? It's the federal ALP, folks, what the hell else did you think was going to happen over the Murray-Darling basin?

I could throw a stone from here and hit at least a dozen blogs decrying the capering goblins at News Ltd, but no amount of disapprobation from the outside can damage News' reputation the way they damage themselves with this sort of infantile drivel.

The few remaining hermits who haven't read exhaustively about Grogsgate yet can catch up here, but suffice to say that News reached new heights of sanctimonious, self-serving personal attacks, anorexically cloaked as serving the public interest.

Wonk (noun) slang

1. a student who spends too much time studying and has little or no social life; grind

2. a stupid, boring or unattractive person

3. a person who studies a subject or issue in an excessively assiduous and thorough manner; a policy wonk

Ok, so given those meanings, an invitation to wonkdrinks may not sound like much fun. I'm too old for the first one, too adorable for the second and too much of a dedicated dilettante for the third. Nevertheless, when the invitation went out on Twitter, Justin and I put on our drinking boots and headed off to the wilds of North Melbourne to meet the glittering icons of the twitterati.

Election time! Which means every media hound in the country is straining at the leash like a corgi in heat. Here at the Tribune, we’ve decided that there’s very little point in us regurgitating the wisdom of the many far more knowledgeable folk up to their elbows in entrails, so we’re going to take a slightly different look at the election.

Firstly we’re going to cover the local (Melbourne Ports) candidates, find out who they are and write about their take on local issues as well as federal issues. As always, we’ll focus on facts, truth and smartarse remarks.

There is very little in sport that has made me happy lately. And it may surprise you to know that, from time to time, I like being happy. And I miss it.

In round 11 in the AFL I tipped eight, if you include a draw, which most comps do. Trouble is, I did it in the work tipping, which means I get a free Whopper next time I buy a Whopper. If I’d put the same tips in at the King, I would have picked up a jackpot of about $250. As a result, I am no longer in any tipping competitions; I will, of course, continue to post my ridiculous suggestions for how you should tip.

I’m a rampant media consumer, way too much of the time I should spend being productive I am instead wandering around the internet reading about stuff. Politics and religion and sex are all staples, but if you can write really well or have something really interesting to say (or enough of one to make the lack of the other irrelevant) I will read your shit.

Bloggers tend to have one particular topic they write about, politics, sport, parenting, religion, feminism, maleism (is that a word? Do we need a word for that? Ok, let’s save that for another post), body image, fashion, food, crafts, and on and on ad infinitum. They write intelligently and articulately on all these subjects, without sensationalism or prurience. By comparison they can, and do, make the mainstream media look foolish.

Another storm in a media teacup ysterday. Jason Akermanis, who doesn’t appear to hate publicity, wrote a column in the Herald Sun, who also don’t appear to hate courting controversy, saying that the AFL isn’t ready for publicly gay footballers. Twitter broke a storm of outrage that quickly leaked over to the mainstream media, Akermanis was labelled a homophobe and a bastard.

I'm no journo, but this much I know: newspapers come in two types, broadsheets and tabloids. Generally, broadsheets have produce higher quality reporting than tabloids, which tend toward more sensationalism and gossip.

Here in Melbourne, our sole remaining local Broadsheet is the Fairfax offering, 'The Age'. People have have been lamenting the demise of this once proud bastion of journalism for some time, but today, for me at least, it finally jumped the shark.

There is a point in everyone’s almanac where they admit defeat on summer’s behalf and embrace winter. The scarves and jackets are retrieved from the cupboard above the wardrobe, and the Havianas and shorts are packed away with longing thoughts of sunny days to come.

Personally, I have been able to put a date to this seasonal calorific transition for many a year: the 25th of April. On every other day I am happy to let dawn and all its glory wash over me from the comfort of a deep sleep, every year on ANZAC day however, I have beaten the sun to the starting point of its daily march and made my way to the dawn service.

The people from the internet have been wailing and hand wringing about how all the recent earthquakes were caused by Mother Earth being all mad and getting her revenge on.

Most of the time I don’t pay too much attention to the wingnuts, but there does seem to have been a preponderance of earthquakes hitting the media lately so I though I’d find out whether there really has been an increase in the last few years.

Well I’m so grateful to Fremantle for showing me the error of my ways.

Having advised you to Never Ever Tip Freo, they’re unbeaten after three rounds, achieving their last over the reigning premiers, sitting second on the ladder behind St Kilda, and ahead of Brisbane on percentage.

It’s been an interesting week in the whirligig of fun that constitutes my understanding of feminism.

Tony Abbott came out in favour of paid maternity leave!

I get that he’s chasing the vagina vote, and we should expect all kinds of ridiculousness from politicians in an election year, but could he seriously think that this ill-conceived (yuk yuk) plan is really going to work?

Even us poor women understand that a government needs to be able to sensibly manage an economy. Abbott apparantly can’t manage a sensible walk in the bush.

Dear readers, what you are witnessing, before your very eyes, is the evolution of a writer.

A few weeks ago I decided that I would try my hand at writing a political article, based around the backdrop of Insulationgate. The trouble I found with writing about politics is that there is never a clear straightforward issue to write about.

PETA.  I have heard that this estimable (excremental) organisation are calling for a ban on all animal sourced products, starting with wool from sheep, alpaca, and all the other animals whose fleece has stopped humans freezing to death for millennia.

PETA have even included in their stance those slightly odd home knitters who spin thread from the dog hair found in their vacuum bags. This does seem a little extreme, even for a group of, let’s face it, mainly American nutters.

Let’s, for argument’s sake, get a posse together and go back to 2004. We’ll track down Mark Latham and knock him to the ground as he walks up Garret’s front path. Someone can sit on him for a bit while we send someone else off to have a quick chat to Bob Brown.

I am such a man. I am such a manly man. Surely I am the manliest of men to ever walk the Earth. Why you ask? What has caused this celebration of hirsutey goodness? Well, it takes a real man to admit his mistakes and I have made a mistake….a bit. Maybe not really a mistake, maybe just jumped the gun. In fact, maybe, with all available evidence at the time of writing I was correct and all my opinions and assumptions were brilliant. After all, hindsight is 20/20 and that is how all judgment calls are judged.

It’s gotta be an election year. One, politics is getting interesting again and, two; the talking heads are starting to populate our television screens with an increasing frequency. So far, as I said above, it’s being interesting. Even with only light campaigning there have been plenty of gaffes, and foot-in-mouth disease seems to be highly contagious. Roll on election 2010.

Depending on which side of the fence you sit, it’s been a tough few months for those poor folk pushing the theory of climate change and global warming. First up some pesky hackers broke into the mail server of the University of East Anglia in Britain, stole some rather embarrassing emails and posted them everywhere for the world to see. (Before you all start groaning softly to yourselves, silently wondering when Andrew Bolt starting writing for the Tribune, I would like to say that I am not a climate change sceptic, but trying to pretend that these colossal cock-ups didn’t occur only discredits climate change protagonists, we need to recognise it, address it and move on to the overwhelming evidence that climate change is occurring, and while the reasons for it are incredibly complex, human activities play a significant part.)

So, last week we had our National Day of celebration (or invasion if you are Aboriginal) and once again we’ve had an extra long weekend of bogons running around in Southern Cross / Australian flag inspired apparel along with what is becoming an almost annual debate regarding said flag (and yes I know I have a Southern Cross tattoo but that doesn’t necessarily make me an immediate candidate for bogan fuckwit status.....just means I have a soft spot for my country and I like tattoos).

Okay, you can thank me later. I, through nothing more than a willingness to help, have saved you people an hour or so of your precious time. How you ask? Well, I have read the entire draft Regulation Impact Statement on the introduction of Euro 5/6 Emission Standards into the Australian Design Regulations. If you wish to read it yourself you can find it by clicking on this link.

Tony Abbott is a tool of the highest order, but I find myself in a position of actual defending the little prick, and I hate it.

After the leadership spill last year Miranda Devine declared that “the women of the twitterverse, the ABC and Crikey.com agreed Abbott's election was a disaster”.

A disaster? Maybe, but not one without an amusing side. Tony Abbot as PM would indeed be disastrous, but Tony Abbot as the leader of the opposition could prove to be quite a boon for the nation, if not for the government.

So, after nearly 30 years as a live music venue, The Tote in Collingwood, is closing its doors. The reason given by the licensee is that, after huge new licence fees have been imposed, he simply can’t afford to run the business anymore.

You know those people, (usually celebrities), that you’ve never met but still hold in high regard. For my money, Bruce Willis is one. Bruce is the epitome of cool. It seems that he would be as comfortable having a beer in the dingiest of pubs as he would walking the red carpet of a Hollywood blockbuster premiere. I have never seen or read an interview that left me thinking he was a bit of a tool. The way he handled his and Demi’s divorce and her subsequent marriage to Ashton Kutcher left me in awe; safe to say that I had a bit of a man crush.

..so of course I don’t have anything else to think about.

Thank God for Mia Freedman and her blog. If it wasn’t for her I would never have heard about My New Pink Button, which is a wonderful new product for women whose lady bits are just not quite that perfect shade of pink.

If indeed it ever started for Metro Rail. The results for the past month are in and there is no improvement in the Connex run system. Funny that. I thought new stickers would fix everything.

Don't know if you've seen Sherlock Holmes yet? Not a bad flick, but the name was a little dull. Might I suggest:

After the age of ten I was never really into Christmas. I just couldn’t see the point, generally we’d all leave our comfortable house and head somewhere, we didn’t really want to go, to talk to people that we spent most of the year trying to avoid. It made no sense. As I got older Christmas became more and more like attending a strip club. It was ridiculously expensive and at the end of it you walked away feeling more than a little disappointed.

Well It’s Come To This……

“OH MY GOD!!”

The cry from beloved was so full of anguish that it made me look around for attacking ninja, the kids to run for cover and for the fish to continue swimming unconcernedly. What the hell?

I ask what is wrong and got an answer I could never have been ready for: “I’ve just agreed with a Robyn Riley article.” No, I could never be ready for that.

I read the article shortly after this and found that I too also agreed with it. The world will never be the same. Ms. Riley has written about the recent ban on jumps racing, and how it will mean the death of thousands of perfectly healthy horses.

As published in Crikey:

I like Nick Xenophon, I like him a lot. He’s like the anti-Steve: an independent senator able to keep his head above water as he swims through the senatorial swill.

His attack on the tax free status church of Scientology last night was laudable, and long overdue, but did not go nearly far enough.

I know that my articles are usually about cars and car related topics but bear with me. This is important.

My father-in-law buys the Sunday Herald-Sun every week. I’m serious. With no explanation whatsoever he plonks it down in the lounge room every Sunday after he comes back home from drinking coffee at one of those cafes and disappears back to his room to watch Sunday TV shows; all this while I’m either asleep or trying to keep track of The Simpsons plotlines on Fox 8, usually +2. Because of this I am normally guilty of flicking through said paper whilst wondering aloud why the thickest paper of the week takes the least time to read.

The asylum seeker debate seems to have been taken over by the hysterical right screeching about thousands of terrorists flooding to our shores with the fixed intention of strapping on a suicide vest and blowing up our kindergartens; and the equally hysterical left demanding that the entire 15 million benighted inhabitants of UN refugee camps should be immediately flown to Australia and given a free plasma screen TV and a laptop.

In all the shrieking, some of the basic facts seem to have been lost, so, with not a great deal of research and nothing in the way of expertise, I would like to debunk a few of the more erroneous claims:

As you know, I’ve always had something to shout about when it comes to the AFL. Many many Tribunes ago I crunched the numbers for a season and put in plain terms how the League was running things for the benefit of a few teams (well, one team: Collingwood), and absolutely fucking most of the rest, but in particular the weaker ones.

The Liberal Party really have learnt how to tear apart a good foundation haven’t they? The once solidified, unbreakable, unbeatable political unit, united behind their geek in glasses, now seem a shambolic mess, unable to work out who they should be deifying.

Why do we have to put up with the bizarre rantings of a man who has so obviously passed his prime? Today, somehow, Wilson Tuckey managed to get both feet in his mouth and still spout the most offensive and ill-considered crap I've heard for some time.

You may have seen Brendan Nelson’s farewell to his electorate last week. So did Crikey and they decided to have the Crikey Army say their own special good bye to Brendan.

This was my entry, which didn’t win (poo!) but did get a special mention. The winning entry is here but it’s not as good as mine.

''Another great challenge of our age is asylum seekers. The biblical injunction to care for the stranger in our midst is clear. The parable of the Good Samaritan is but one of many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to a vulnerable stranger in our midst.”

Myf Warhurst wrote a piece in the Age the other day that made me really sad.

She wrote about excited she was when she was told that Matt Preston had named a cravat after her and the subsequent devastation she felt when she discovered that said cravat was called the Myf because it was “short and slightly wide”.

Having been flamed in the past by climate change deniers, and more recently by fundamentalist christians (no, these people don’t deserve a capital “c”) and, having seen what can happen put the loony left, the lunar right and a bunch of Jesus freaks in a blender, I approach the subject of Senator Fielding with not a little trepidation.

They call it commercial TV for a good reason: it’s full of commercials. For this reason, as well as the fact that the internet gets me stuff when I actually want it, I stopped watching a long time ago.

Okay, I know Americans like to have opinions and like to shout them very loudly to anyone who will listen (kind of like me really, hehehe!) but I’ve really got to take issue with Harry Connick Jr, Oprah Winfrey and any other American media whore who sticks their nose in the air and whines about the Jackson Jive sketch on Red Faces during this week’s edition of the Hey Hey It’s Saturday reunions. You have leapt past an undeniable truth and jumped on a minor issue, you short sighted morons!

We’ve published a couple of stories about our whippets on this site. The story about how Owen inadvertently caused Justin to charge, frothing with rage and vile obscenities, at Eric Bana in a public park was probably the most popular, but there have been others.

Well, a few weeks ago Phoebe the Whippet was hit by a car. We opened our front door and she ran on to the road before anyone had time to stop her. The driver that hit her saw her run out, but was going too fast to stop in time.

Having completely stuffed up the naming of its God-awful-sounding cream cheese and Vegemite in a jar, the carbon blobs down at Kraft have reissued the naming competition with a list of six options for us punters to pick from.

I'm no fan of Jetstar. I think they should be held to account for the shocking service standards they set and consistently fail to meet. I don't think they are efficient, clean, or comfortable; I don’t even find them comparatively and consistently cheap. But having watched the news tonight I found myself having to jump into their corner. A most disturbing and uncomfortable place indeed.

When did we get some politicians with some balls (Bronwyn Bishop excluded) and why wasn’t I informed?!

First we had Barnaby Joyce threatening to cross the floor on certain issues but never really coming to the party, then Stephen Fielding (UGH!!!! VOMIT!!!) threatening to cross the floor, but only to blackmail both sides of parliament into bowing to his agenda. Now we have a real hero who has done it once and vows to do it again, just because it’s the right thing to do.

Fev is no stranger to fuck ups involving alcohol, let’s face it. That thing in Ireland, that thing in Prahran, that thing with the dildo, that thing the other night at the Brownlow. Gee whiz, a big fit young man who’s a star in a rampantly male industry, at one of the blokier clubs in the competition has a tendency to act like a dick when full of gas. Who woulda thunk it?

Those avid readers of the Daily Shout will have joined me in nodding their head (and maybe holding a fist aloft) while reading Jane's lament about the lack of credible journalism with which we are faced on today’s newswires.

Dear The Age,

I’ve read you since I was a kid; I’m forty now, so of course I’ve changed, but so has the world.

In the past couple of years I’ve started to devour online media, and you, from being my starting-point, have slipped to becoming an occasional click for sports news (though the little paper and many others do it so much better) and the weather.

Who's to Blame? Politicians or The Press Gallery?

So, Question Time this week has, depending on your point of view, either been rollickingly funny Canberran WWF, or a farcical shemozzle of childish political point scoring.

Did I miss a meeting or did I fall asleep?

During a recent conversation with Editor Jane that it was decided that I am virtually impossible to offend. This because she had been instructed by a friend to ask me whether she had inadvertently offended me the previous day.

Last week, Professor James Anaya, the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights, came to Australia to review the circumstances of indigenous Australians, particularly in relation to the Northern Territory intervention. His full review is yet to be released, but he put out a preliminary statement that you can read in full here

The statement was nearly 2000 words long, but the phrase seemed to capture the most media attention was: “the tremendous suffering (experienced by indigenous people) at the hands of historical forces and entrenched racism”.

Especially when you have none!

It was with much hilarity tonight that I read an article about polling results published by some money-worshipping mob called Essential Research.

Oh. My. God.

This popped up at me when I was on some innocuous dictionary site this morning.

Is it….I…I’m in the highly unusual state of being almost lost for words…The “Before” picture… by implication, the terribly unsexy stomach…I…well… she’s PREGNANT!!!!

Some nights, while you’re sleeping the fail fairies come and sprinkle fail dust in your hair, so no matter how hard you try, everything you do the next day will fail. Epically.

This morning I woke up (late) shouted at the children for not doing something I had told them I would do while they were in bed, stepped on the dog, forgot to feed the cat and drove half way up my street with the hand brake on, while cursing the car for being so crap and unreliable.

Then I got to work, email a Very Important Client apologising for the delay on their impotent issue, and ascribing said delay to the fact that I am so busty at the moment.

So I thought I would escape into Twitter for some light relief. In my first tweet of the day I managed to accidentally suggest to someone that dogs should crap in their ear (which they shouldn’t) because he owns a purple poodle (which he doesn’t). This, mind you, was directed at the most welcoming and friendly of all the tweeple I’ve met on Twitter. Apology attempt implied that it was all his fault for posting such a link (which it wasn’t and he posts lots of very interesting link, which I truly enjoy).

So, realising that interaction with the virtual world was an increasingly bad idea I decided to take myself out for some medicinal muffins.

I’m not usually one for the feminist rant. As I’ve said before I think the gender wars are over, women won (here in Australia at least) the right to make their own choices about pretty much everything and now it’s time to just get on with it. Complaining that we are not exactly the same as men or how unfair it is that we now have to deal with the consequences of our choices is, by my lights, totally anti-feminist.

Which is why, when someone sent me this picture, I was surprised by the hackles it raised.

Are they also selling No Fat Chicks bumper stickers to go with it?

Oh for God’s sake! I know the pollies and the Herald Sun both function on the supposition that the voting public is incredibly gullible, but really, apart from electing the Rudd the first time, what did we ever do to make them think we’re THAT stupid?

The story of the Balibo 5, Australia-based journalists murdered by Indonesian troops in 1975, and the subsequent murder of another Australian journalist, Roger East, is the subject of a new film by Robert Connolly. (I haven’t seen it yet, but I plan to in the next couple of days, and will write a review either here or in the September Tribune). Before I've even seen it, however, I've had cause to get Very Angry.

I don’t watch morning TV, and there’s a couple of good reasons for that.

Firstly, because it’s SHIT, secondly because I have too much to do, thirdly because I listen to Radio National (actual journalism) and, most importantly, because it’s SHIT.

Normally I like the Health Report, it’s interesting, well presented and well researched. It rarely gets me shrieking imprecations and throwing things at the radio.

Apparently Kevvie’s people have reminded him about the internets again (“hey, ya big moonfaced git, there’s an entire generation out there that don’t give a toss about your latest sound bite” “Noooooooooo….pay attention to MEEEEE!!! Look at MEEEE!! Listen to MEEEE!!”).

Michael Jackson’s dead.

I guess you probably know that.

So, ok, well, how are we supposed to feel about it?

His music was ok, I danced to his songs in the 80s’, but let’s face it, anyone who danced in the 80s would have danced to Michael Jackson at some point, so I don’t think that qualifies me as a fan.

Pretty much everyone by now would have heard about Albanese’s Latham jibe in parliament yesterday, unless of course you’ve been hiding under a rock, sick to death of petty political mud slinging and wishing like hell that someone would drop a gigantic cowpat on the lot of them (in which case you should just scroll down and read the snake thing).

Grubby, childish, desperate, pointless. No, Big Brother’s not coming back for another season, I’m talking about the OzCar fake email stoush that’s currently got our nation’s Parliament and press fully occupied, digging through buckets of swill and gleefully paddling about in it, spraying the rest of us with its worthlessness and venality.

There’s been a bit of media squawking lately about Prince Charles getting involved in the permit process of a building development in London. Apparently His Boringness wrote a letter to the owners of the building development (the Qatar royal family) complaining about the execrable design of the proposed new building and asking them to put a stop to it.

And it seems there’s still honour among royals, because the Qataris agreed and fired architect Richards Rogers – responsible for inflicting the Millennium Dome and Madrid's Terminal 4 (above) upon the world.

To add insult to injury, the Qataris then passed the architectural design job on to Prince Charles' Foundation for the Built Environment, who will hopefully not turn the project into an LSD-flashback-inducing love child of a mutant 70s ashtray and an art installation from the Jeffersons’ new condo.

LOOK what those demented despots at Qantas have done now.

There they were thinking it was all terribly funny and amusing to go throwing thousands of snakes at us from the skies and now look at what’s happened. Lonsdale St is infested with black snakes.

And where is the public outrage? Where are the blogs and the protest marches and the outraged segments on Today Tonight? Is everybody really too busy moaning about swine flu to notice that there are snakes in Myers? IN MYERS?!?!? It’s like being unexpectedly eviscerated by a tiny helpless kitten!! How can there be snakes in MYERS??? That’s where you go to try on boots and perfume, not where you go to be attacked by marauding hordes of wild black snakes.

And people are LAUGHING about this!! How is that funny?? Children, poor wee innocent babies, go there, how is it funny that Qantas and Meyers are sicking deadly snakes onto them? What kind of twisted lunatic would find that FUNNY????