What do Typo, Katter, Cuddlepie, Churchill and fighting feminists have in common? They're all your guests this week in the Nest.

Your menu of trinkets, m'dears:

* Cuddlepie proves that desperate times call for desperate - albeit ludicrous - measures with a mega brain-fade on his highway from hell

* Churchillian echoes for Bob Katter's Cut Snake Party, 

* fun as two big Brunhildes of the sisterhood go the gouge on each other in the jelly-filled      wrestling ring of feminist ideology, 

* The Astonisher has two bob each way on its much trumpeted green credentials and 

* Typo gets it wrong in an editorial.   

All these baubles along with Nest's resident doodler Bentley's bent view of the state of Aussie politics in an overflowing nest atwww.townsvillemagpie.com.au

First, Cuddlepie's complete meltdown.

It is sad to have to stand by and watch the disintegration of a once decent, likable and smart-ish fellow, but The Magpie is dismayed to see Cuddlepie Wallace so comprehesively lose the plot. What other conclusion can there be after his performance yesterday (Friday) when his risible claim that under a Campbell Newman regime, the Bruce Highway would become a toll road! As if. 

How did the Minister for mean Roads know this? 

Apparently, during a Newman swing through the north recently, a reporter in Innisfail overheard someone say 'Bruce Highway' and 'toll road' in the same sentence while said person was within 500 metres of the visiting Brisbane Bantam. Possibly, judge for yourself. Here's what Cuddlepie's press release had to say about the source of the infomation. 

'The LNP have been caught out trying to introduce tolls on the Bruce Highway after a journalist at the Innisfail Advocate confirmed reports to State Parliament that the Party was considering them on a recent trip to the Far North.'

Huh? 'Confirmed reports to State Parliament'?  That has about as much basis for reality as 'name and address supplied' on anonymous missives in the Townsville Bulletin's letters page. 

Now, The Magpie's personal jury on Campbell Newman is still out - way out - but even the Brisbane Bantam couldn't envisage such an catastrophic - and unenforceable - policy. 


Unenforceable? As the LNP was quick to point out, even if such a wacky idea was deemed a good idea (which the LNP doesn't, Jeff Seeney bluntly labelling it a lie), the simple fact is that states in Australia are not allowed to levy tolls on federally funded roads like the Bruce Potholer. 

Pity Cuddlepie's poor bloody taxpayer-funded staff, who were given a calculator and told to tote up one of the greatest bullsh*t lists of charges ever to come out of this train wreck of a government, and worked out a figure of a dollar per kilometre! Have a look for yourself. That piece of desperate 'Cuddlepie In The Sky' doesn't even rate a 'nice try'.

That is not to say similarly idiotic ideas sometimes don't get through elaborate parliamentary systems.  

For instance, how would you like it if the Commonwealth Government took over all local garbage collection? Right across the country?

While there is a certain poetic symmetry in our federal politicians being responsible for rubbish - there should be No Littering and Butt Out signs plastered all around the House of Reps at question time - it would be an unwieldy model to operate, prone to smelly stuff-ups, (just like question time) wouldn't it? No presumably sane national government would do it, would they? 

They would, you know. But - whew - not here.

Where else but in Pommyland could this behomoth of humbuggery happen. Yep, Westminster calls the shots and makes the rules - hundreds of them - on garbo collection, and carries out the pick-up rounds across the length and breadth their Sceptred Isle. Or is that now septic isle? Local councils don't have a say or a role in it. 

So as a cautionary tale, should you be irritated if there be the occasional hiccup in the TCC model, have a look at what is required of each and every British household, as reported here in London's Daily Mail. Make sure you first go to the bottom of the story and look at the pic of the nine- yes, nine - separate bins each household has to correctly use. Forget Elm Street, this is a nightmare on all streets over there.

Such 'Nanny state' politics was also the cause of much rending of garments and genteel howls of rage in the ranks of jurassic feminism this week. Two heavyweights (as in influence, what else could The `Pie mean?) in the bib'n'braces boilersuit brigade went at it hammer and curling tongs, accusing each other of just about everything except using diplatory cream. As The Magpie learnt from the ever-entertaining John Roskam on his Institute of Public Affairs blog, Tanja Kovac used The Punch website to accuse the IPA of being 'sexist' because it uses the 'gendered' term Nanny State (so we need to lose Big Brother, too?).

The boys being boys. John R and the crew chuckled and thought it was a joke. But not IPA's staffer Julie Novak, who hitched up her industrial undies and went for Ms Kovacs's jugs ...err, jugular. Both rants are somewhat overwrought, turgid and and a bit of a storm in a B Cup (well, it is about feminism and stuff), but if you're of a mind, here is Kovacs opening salvo, and here is Novak's reply.  Go, gals.

Katters Komic Kapers are yet to reveal their full potential. And no, KKK would not be a good idea as a party acronym. But if we've got the LNP why not also the CSP, the Cut Snake Party (mad as).  The `Pie was reminded of this when he came across a little-known verbal shaft by old Winnie Churchill. 

He suggested that a conservative who was about to switch parties to the smaller, struggling Brtitish Liberal Party was 'the only recorded instance in history of a rat swimming towards a sinking ship'. 

We still have no word on the rodent quota freestyling their way towards Kaptain Katter, and perhaps we never will, especially after his toe-curlingly embarrassing and ill-advised appearance on the ABC's National Television Q&A program. Testing times and Bentley, the Nest's resident doodler has his own take on the current outlook on recent developments.

In that previous story about the pommy rubbish bins, the mention about reading the bottom of a story first brings us back to our own neck of the woods and our own Daily Astonisher. 

A case in point was the blather this week about parking meters not accepting $2 coins in a long - very long - tale of inconsequential twaddle based on one sole whinger. 

Now, no refelection on the reporter here, who has to follow the Chief of Stuff's one word mantra - 'overwrite', but to paraphrase that old Greek geezer Aristotle, one whinger does not a story make. Especially when the council boffin in charge of the parking made it clear there was no major problem with the machines (installed, incidentally, by the Mooney regime), they have a demonstrably low error rate, and generally only with $2 coins. This could lead to the solution of using  ... hmm, let's see ... well, duh, you go figure it out. 

BUT all this reasonable refutation of a unsubtle council-bashing yarn came at the END of the story. Which made the whole thing a non-starter. 

The Magpie asks again, when there are some many legitimate issues with which to bash this often shambolic council, why further damage the paper's creditability in the eyes of its rapidly dwindling readership with such obvious pap like this. 

Maybe no one had stolen a garden gnome that day.

It is also the V8 SuperPest season, and The Astonisher can smell the money in the air with sponsors, deals and general rip-offs. They certainly need the dough, being a reported 30% down on projected revenue for the financial year just ending. Gosh, at that rate, they might make only $15million profit for Sydney's coffers this financial year. But there can be little doubt that general manager Shrek Wilkins and editor Typo Gleeson are in a lather of doubt, self-loathing and cruel compromise in ballyhooing this particular event. The Magpie assumes there were hours of lost sleep, floor pacing and soul searching about supporting the SuperPests. 

Why? 

Well, here's why.

This is the paper's two bob each way sign-off to all staff emails, which features gaudy gas guzzlers with a carbon footprint the envy of Bigfoot - right above a sanctimonious self-promoting message about News Ltd's claims to be a carbon-free, environmentally goody-two-shoes corporation. 

Memo Shrek: you may be both an eager promoter of car racing and also a verdant  front-rank green warrior, but trumpeting both these claims publicly one above the other also makes you ... well, more a chump than a champ.   

And just before we leave the oddities of Ogden Street, a memo this time for Typo. In your brown-nosing editorial praising the state's stumblebum budget (which again dudded North Queeland not that you'd know it by the toadying editorial),

your pants-wetting eagerness to please your backroom Labor bosses over-reached on at least one fact. You painted a picture of grateful pensioners rushing out to vote Labor because they finally removed the iniquitous ambulance levy (imposed originally thanks to Snooze) from electricity bills. You sugggested the saving would mean so much to pensioners.

Err, old buddy pal, pensioners have NEVER had to pay the levy. The Magpie certainly hasn't - there's been a clear ambulance levy $0.00 entry on his bills - ever since he officially entered old fartdom last year. 

Perhaps The `Pie's call for a FAB policy (Fair And Balanced) should now be Fair, Accurate, Balanced.

Enough! It is once again away to Poseurs' Bar where the old bird will seek out a suitable companion - one not wearing an old boilersuit - to yet again talk rubbish in the hope of a pickup.