The real joke is that more houses and insulation drowned the length of the East Coast during the massive floods.

Come on Julian, we all know that there are no journalists at Crikey, only spin doctors.

Hay Marilyn, we all know it was Rudd going off half cocked that caused the insulation fires & deaths, but I had not realised he was responsible for those floods too.

Got to admit he's versatile with his catastrophes.

Hi Hasbeen, you may have noticed reference to the CSIRO studies of HIP and its effects. Certainly, that's where the information originated both for the Crikey article and The Age opinion piece of around the same time.

I know, it is very uncomfortable to think that we have simply been told the opposite of the truth by the press overall - apart from those few exceptions who bothered to look at real studies rather than hysterical assumption.

The real catastrophe was the Global Financial Heist. Zillions of dollars of hard-earned national assets scooped into the coffers of the bankers who caused it. Time for drastic rescue measures. All stoppers pulled out to rescue ... ... who? In Europe and Britain and America - the bankers. Hit the populations to bail out the delinquent bankers. We were the really lucky country - we'd just elected a government that rushed in to rescue the people. That's what happened. We were spared catastrophic poverty. Fact. And at the end of it all we have emerged with triple-A ratings from the world's agencies for top class economic management. Fact. Imagine nominating these twin cities to illustrate: Melbourne-Athens. Sydney-Madrid. Geelong-Detroit.

So why don't more people FEEL lucky? The most tightly controlled news media in the civilised world going at it day in day out for suix years. This will likely lead to an Abbott Government. But those who purchased it may be disappointed. Tony Abbott is no John Howard. He's not an honorary Yank. His "bad versus bad" comment on Syria, seized on by embedded Yankophile Rudd who had rivalled Howard in the big crawl over the US's Iraqi WMD lies, may be a straw in the wind. His background is DLP, extreme Roman Church ideologues, but they have an empathy with working men and women, with those whom the patrician element would regard as the Great Unwashed. For one, I think he's dinkum about no return to Work Choices or increased GST gouging or a Campbell Newman economy. Watch this space.

Emperor Julian: 'For one, I think he's dinkum about no return to Work Choices or increased GST gouging or a Campbell Newman economy.'

HE might be, but not the pipers he will have to pay. Make no mistake. His side of politics (worldwide) is now committed to endgame neoliberalism - complete destruction of the welfare state, worker rights, the public service and public ownership of anything at all. They know that global capitalism is sinking under its own weight and they are making sure that only the mega-wealthy will be on the lifeboats.

Goody, my futures in Top Hats should make a fortune after the next election. Please remember to take your pink pills, I can feel Lefty Hysteria about to boil over into total irrationality.

Will drowning people on the high-seas be evil again after the election?