Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Let’s take it from the top. Fran Kelly put this project together and she is well respected by other journalists (an interesting enough tale in itself). In my view she hasn’t done a very good job but when all you have to do is sit back and watch a bunch of self-important dimwits who’ve never done a decent day’s work in their lives commit hara kiri in front of you, I guess you lose the incentive to try any harder.

It’s a bit like passing a pub on a very hot Australian afternoon – there are times when you just can’t resist. The two things that took my eye today in the job ads were this. What does one have to do to be a real professor in Wagga? And this that I must just reproduce in full because it offers such a fun opportunity for a jape in tough times ...

The climate is such that we are going through a lull. The field, as Farmer George well knew, has, from time to time, to lie fallow in order to yield at a later time. Now we are beset by mangels, wurzels and turnips; I have confidence the new year will see a bumper crop of exotica.

Governor-General Quentin Bryce joined hundreds of Australians in the town of Le Hamel in Northern France, at a moving ceremony to rededicate a memorial to honour Australians who fought a decisive World War I battle. (ABC Online, Just In)

Would this bloody breakfast never end? Then again, what ends are there? Howard’s End [available in all good bookshops, published by Penguin]? Will there be a Malcolm’s End and when might it be and for which one of us?

Damn if I didn’t have it here somewhere. A large, thank you James. Damn, not under the chair is it, m’dear? Last few Chapters of Prince Crispian. Damn. Oh here it is inside today’s Tele. Oh, that’s not it. Same typeface. What’s this then? Oh things do change so when you’re dead...

This announcement by the Prime Minister, if correctly reported, is a recipe for disaster because of its open-endedness. The agreement of the Leader of the Opposition is equally rash. To guarantee deposits for the big four with substantial assets makes some limited sense but ...

I put my mug of tea down on the table and picked up my pen to return to the Sudoku. She entered the room. Although She had fallen on hard times largely as a result of the depredations of those in my profession, I could never look at her, ageing although she now was, without my heart heaving into my mouth.

The bill was introduced by Senator Coonan for whom I have great respect as a lawyer. She is senior counsel, an experienced commercial lawyer and no dill. One might have expected that she would produce legislation that had legs (she has too). She did.

Would that more politicians would be so honest.    She didn't know what she was talking about in specifics, acknowledged it immediately and apologised.   Good on her.

”Bugger the canaries,” I thought He said. Quietly looking up from my sudoku, I raised a half-quizzical, half-disinterested eyebrow which I had developed in the days when I started smoking Sobranies and said “You what?”

For some time the management team has been considering ways of taking Webdiary beyond its traditional function as a forum for the discussion of anything and everything, especially politics. Now Malcolm B Duncan has come up with the idea of a notice board - a Town Crier - and we think it's worth a try. So, over to you – when does the book club next meet?

Australians should get ready for the crunch. The massive write-downs on balance sheets by the big banks and enormous provisioning for bad or risky loans is not over by a long shot. From my experience, we have our own sub-prime crisis that hasn’t even begun to surface yet although the first bubbles are about a millimetre below sea level.

I hope the dimwits in the National Party and the Liberal Party up there sent their sitting Senators off for health checks before they voted to amalgamate because, by convention, the Governor of Queensland is obliged to follow the advice of his Ministers.

So, by all means go out and be annoying but don’t be inconvenient or obstructive or threaten anyone. The decision is, in my opinion, apellable but we’ll probably never get to that because of the time constraints. Nevertheless, would you put it past this NSW Government to pass a new Regulation tonight?

Somehow, the Rat Singer just knew it was going to be hell or some rhyming equivalent: mell, smell, something like that. Yet he had decided that there should be a kiddies’ day for all the little kiddies so that they could get in touch with their inner priest...

What happened to chapters 3 to 7, you ask. Well, I was discussing that with Jack the other day and I think it’s all getting away from him a bit. But just to get you back up to speed – oh yes, a little lower m’dear – I jotted down a few notes and passed them to the scribbler lad.

The case against members of ABC TV's The Chaser's War on Everything has been dropped. Here's why.

It’s about time we met her. We are in a field, a cloth of gold, sun-drenched ripened wheat stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction. The field is in a small depression which limits visibility to about 5 metres. Jenny is listening.

It is often said that I am mad, or sometimes, more kindly, that I am just eccentric, but let me tell you a tale of a young schizophrenic who, for a short time, brought the important part of the known world to its knees until she was burned to a crisp as a result of a quiet political deal.

Well, as I reported earlier, the Yorick papers are more engrossing all the time. These are the replies to his despatch of October 1807. Rum stuff.

What, in the modern world, is the accountability of Ministers, should be the accountability of Ministers and where are the origins of that accountability?

“I’m Julie. I’m a friend of Brendan’s and he’s sent me to save the world for the workers by giving them the same choice they deserve and sticking it right up that red-haired Welsh bint.” From Chapter 2 of the Chronicles of Nadir – Tale the Second – Prince Crispian, as told from the grave by Tom Lewis.

How time flies when one is having fun – almost a year since we thought we’d heard the last of Tale the First of The Chronicles of Nadir. Malcolm B Duncan, channelling the late lamented Tom Lewis, tells what really happened after the book finished.

Both scientific method and the law teach one to be skeptical and base one’s conclusions on evidence. Steeped in both, I remain a climate change skeptic in the sense that, save for the effect of CFCs on the ozone layer, I can see no convincing evidence for human induced effects on the climate. By the same token, I remain agnostic on the issue: if there is evidence, I should like to see it.

It seems as though jobs for the boys may mean the boy doesn’t get the job.  George Newhouse, Labor candidate for Wentworth, was not only Mayor of Waverley (from which he resigned) but a Member of the loony Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal (CTTT).  The article alleges that Mr Newhouse, although he submitted his resignation, did not do so, or alternatively it was not effective, at the time he nominated.

There are some interesting things in play in this Election, and while anything can happen in an election campaign, let me stick my neck out and do a Malcolm McKerras, only unlike the former (who has never ever predicted an election outcome correctly in living memory despite being a self-confessed psephologist and making a living out of it) I hope to get the result roughly correct.   I still believe at this stage that the Coalition will be returned in the House of Representatives with a drastically reduced majority and will maintain its majority in the Senate.

Both of you readers will have to forgive me for being so long about getting back to the cornucopia of Dr Yorick’s chest but I have been occupied with other things of late and, after all, history is just another hobby (although don’t tell Geoffrey Blainey – well it wouldn’t matter really – you can’t tell him anything).   Now that I am at leisure again, I can return to that lascivious cleric, spymaster, and patron of seamstresses (if not their Saint), Jonathon Yorick DD.  

Malcolm is Webdiary's candidate in Wentworth. He writes: "Well, the Federal Election is shaping up to be as boring as batshit so webdiarist Malcolm B. Duncan decided to enlist some help to fulfill a promise he made me a while ago.   The family pet writes...