Crikey

Several months ago your correspondent noted that one of the stranger effects of an appointed upper house in the UK was that someone with a name such as Viscount Curtis-Barraclough of Wickstead-upon-Tweed turns out to be a 45-year-old denim-clad former ex-Trot community worker, who did a couple of turns in a safe Labour seat before being kicked upstairs. At the time I mentioned the case of Baronness Lola Young, “a Grace Jones lookalike”, as particularly mindbending.

As it turned out, Lola Young is an ageing Scots grandee, and the noble I was thinking of was Valerie Amos.

Amos is now British High Commissioner to Australia, an appointment  — of an arch New Labour apparatchik that has caused ructions in the mothuh country. Since Labour is about to be shot in the head, Amos will be obliged by custom to offer her resignation to the old Etonians  — or dare them to replace her  — just as the process of establishing a working relationship has begun.

True, she’s a better appointment in some ways than the previous incumbent Helen Liddell  — fondly known by Labour colleagues as “Stalin’s granny”  — having foreign policy experience.

But her diplomatic abilities leave something to be desired, if her interview on Jon Faine this morning is anything to go by.

The chat hinged on Amos’s recent remark that she was “surprised” by the level of “climate change scepticism” in Australia, and that she was hoping the country would be able to do more of its part to tackle the issue.

Well, yeah, we’re all a bit embarrassed by the toolbox of cranks and munters spruiking climate change sceptic pseudo-science on our sunny shores  — but in point of fact the UK has more than its fair share of the faithful too, from former chancellor Nigel Lawson, through Christopher Monkton, columnists such as Christopher Booker, and not least The Spectator, the country’s largest-selling opinion-based weekly magazine.

Furthermore, it isn’t for the diplomatic representative of another country to chide its host nation’s polity as if it were a recalcitrant schoolchild. Amos’s remarks were dripping with the usual British condescion to Australia  — “such a wonderful country, such positive people, shame you can’t do more to do your bit, dogs on hind legs, women giving sermons”.

Please. Spare us this shit. I’ve noticed it’s worse from left-liberals, and often from British Asian and British black citizens, than from the old Tory right, who are aware how grating it is, even if they see us convict untermenschen.

Left-libs, and New Labour types, are so convinced of the rightness of their views and the decency of their souls, that they never stop to think of the complex nature of British-Australian relations and how patting us on the head MIGHT JUST GIVE US THE IRRITS.

Behind the attitude is often a mildly chauvinist view of Oz as identified with its least desirable white-skin privilege aspect  — nativist, racist, self-satisfied. Patronising Australia is often a substitute for patronising the British working class, and since that has been New Labour’s modus operandi these dozen years, it comes pretty naturally.

We wish Lady Amos well in her stay here, and we will do every effort to make her aware of our unique conditions. Drop-Bears for example, which lurk in gum trees and can attach their sharp fangs to an unsuspecting neck, or the regular January 19th Bondi tsunami. The Northern Territory still uses Australian pounds, and Tasmanians say ‘bonjour’ in greeting, due to the wrecking of La Perouse’s ships on its shores in the 19th century.

Any other helpful advice for her Ladyship that I might have forgotten?

The Cabinet decision to preserve PIR on books was the right one on balance given the impossibility of protecting local authors against overseas-edition dumping (although one insider suggested a way round the problem  — change the 30-day territorial copyright rule to 0 days  — i.e. every Australian book is protected, while many, though not all, o/s books could then circulate in an o/s edition). The jerry-built system is irritating but hardly earth-shattering, and even those of us who saw the prospect of cheaper books never thought that the 30-40% figure often spoken of was anything but fantasy.

To read The Oz, you’d think we’d given Queensland to the Chinese. Who knew national competitiveness depended on the book industry? Weirdest of all was Christian Kerr’s free-form reflection on dependency and individual achievement. For this he relied upon a reflection on Samuel Smiles, author of the 19th-century classic Self-Help.

Yeah uh well-chosen, dimwit. Smiles was in fact a Chartist, the forerunner of the trade union movement. Though he began to focus on individual character as a force in political change, he remained a supporter of trade unions, and a believer in collective action. The individual-collective notions that the Hayek alcan foil hat brigade bang on about simply don’t map onto 19th century liberal politics so easily.

Would Smiles see PIR as a violation of free trade principles  — or the collective action of authors as an example of self-help by “principled artisans?” What sort of self-help is involved in working for a vanity newsletter such as The Oz, which wouldn’t last five minutes in the market as a stand-alone title? How crucial to its success as the decades-long protection against foreign-media ownership?

Boy bullied by Muslim kids for eating salami. All Muslim kids remain unbullied for being Muslims for 10th straight year.

Ah, The Spectator, the gift that keeps on giving. The Oz edition remains off the internet  — or very well hidden  — but the UK parent continues to entertain. Its latest adventure into exciting scepticism is another run for the old “no link bewteen AIDS and HIV” story. No Thabo Mbeki isn’t writing for them the Tories. It’s some local lunatic, whom people like Tom Switzer and Peter Coleman must love sharing a staple with.

The Bolter  — whose blog has no portal thruway on the Herald Sun main site —  (is News Ltd getting ready to ditch blogs altogether?) — is exercised about green propaganda:

NBC gives new meaning to the phrase “green screen” next week, spreading a pro-environmental message across five of its prime-time entertainment programs. 30 Rock, where Al Gore takes a cameo role, leads the way. Environmental themes were also added to the scripts of The Biggest Loser, The Office, Heroes and Community.

I agree. Who would work for, for example, a company whose jowly ageing Australian leader declared would seed green messages in news stories, and brags about being carbon-neutral by 2015? No getting into the head of such sycophants, eh Bolter?

If The Spectator crowd have been crazed by their lack of access to actual Tory power, spare a thought for the US Right. Christian pin-up Carrie Prejean now has a sex tape out  — it’s a masturbation one, which surely Leviticus has some stern words on.

Her gal pal Sarah Palin started off a mad conspiracy thing about why the words “in God we trust” were being moved to the edge of American coins  — before being informed that this was a delayed initiative by the, erm, Dubya Bush administration.

The most famous image from the latest tea party rallies has become a banner of emaciated corpses at Dachau, with the words “state-owned health care” on them. And Dinesh D’Souza, who did more than anyone to start off the “political correctness” craze in the early 90s with his book Illiberal Education, has a new work out on  — proving scientifically that there is life after death.

Count your blessings Malcolm in the Middle  — by contrast the joys of Barnaby and the occasional Minchin of green propaganda are mild by comparison.