Let's start the year off with a small guessing game. See if you know the answers before peeking.

The newspaper adage has it that Dog Bites Man is not news, but Man Bites Dog is. Well, The 'Pie can go one better - journo bites bird.

Yep, the old fella has been savaged by no less than an award winning Bulletin journo (that's a small field, can you guess? Clue: it's not Tony Raggatt.)

Also, how the world turns - we all know that Peter Lindsay is now Tony Mooney's boss, but you'll never guess who else comes under Prince Peter's sway.

The third guess is how much money Britain has coughed up to stop South American cows farting and arranging meetings between climate change folks and African tribal rainmakers.

Plus the week's most apt name, and Bentley takes on the ageists of the motoring world, all here in the nest at www.townsvillemagpie.com.au

The Name That Fits The Bill this week goes to the Westpac senior economist interviewed last Thursday on the ABC 7.30 Report ...  Justin Smirk. Unfortunate in the extreme when you work for one of the biggest corporate bastards in this country which short-changes the general population to make obscene profits and executive payments.

Life is funny-peculiar in other ways.

The 'Pie has always been tickled by the fact that Prince Peter of Lindsay, the former Laird of Herbert is now the chairman of Guildford Coal. That makes him Tony 'His Radiance' Mooney's boss, who works as a community relations person or somesuch.

We all know this man is the boss of ...

...this man.

It is reported that nowadays, Pete and His Radiance get on famously, having put aside their former political differences - which weren't all that different underneath the zinging and pinging blather - both appeared to be heading towards crypto-fascism as they approached the end of their public careers. 

But cop this - Guildford Coal has a subsidiary company holding some mining leases and business interests in Mongolia. And who sits on the board of that lesser company?

This man ....

... he is also the boss of this man?

None other than Manadrin-speaking Craig Cuddlepie Wallace, Queensland's former Minister for Mean Roads, now resident in Shanghai with his Chinese-born wife and family. 

So Peter Lindsay is now Craig Wallace's boss, too! 

It's a fair bet that Cuddlepie nowadays refrains from slinging the mud and telling porkies about The Prince - if he wants to keep his job. 

One group on the international scene who shouldn't keep their jobs are the ninnys who drafted a whole raft of British contributions towards assisting climate change - worth a cool 2.9 billion pounds.  Fair chunks of this money mountain will go towards trying to stop South American cattle farting, and to help arrange meetings between meteorologists and African tribal rainmakers. Read this and realise that Australia's pink batts, school sheltersheds and grocery watch are models of prudent  government policy next to this nincompoopery. 

Another matter of interest coming out of Britain is the latest YouTube blast from the very articulate and - for The 'Pie's money - well-argued Pat Condell. You may recall his previous appearance on this post, sticking it to the medieval Muslim protestors. Well, he's at it again - this time giving his take on the Palestinians - and The Magpie finds it hard to fault his reasoning, all the more effective for Mr Condell's clever construct and emotionally muted delivery. Well worth the watch here.

Emotionally muted is hardly the phrase we can apply to resident doodler Bently, who has gone all out of shape over the perennial space filler in the news columns - let's make older drivers get medicals and submit to annual driving tests. The Magpie could bang on about this silly-season, quiet news day staple, but a single Bentley picture is worth a thousand Magpie words on this issue.

Bentley's lady driver may well have also said 'Well, at least I've made it this far. Will you?'

Kath Skene's winning smile hides  a desire
 to be praised for her achievements only
by those of whom she morally approves.  

On the local front, this week, Daily Astonisher reporter Kathleen  Skene - a deserved Walkley Award winning journalist - wrote the following to The 'Pie, presumably to square off with her colleagues and her management to prove she is no particular chum of, or communicator with, the old bird. Worth the read, because it's not often one gets a massive fact-free spray simply for praising someone's work.

'Malcolm Weatherup, I do wish you would stop endorsing me here, as the feeling is most assuredly not mutual. Your inexplicable animosity towards bright young journalists you have never met is matched only by the pure fantasy of your content. I don’t come here often because it makes me sad to see a man who I used to think was quite good company, turned so blindly, hypocritically and obsessively bitter. For a person who is, ostensibly, a stickler for accountability and fact-checking in the media, you run your anonymous blog based on 100% rumour and off-the-mark assumption. When we worked together, I used to think you were a nice bloke. A shithouse journalist, but a nice bloke. Only one of those opinions has changed. I hope you find some happiness in 2013 ‘Pie. It is not healthy for a person to live their life hanging onto the frayed strands of a sad past. I reckon there are people out there who miss the nice bloke you once were, maybe you could consider bringing him back for their sake.' 

What!?!?!? 

The 'Pie is absolutely outraged.

HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST THAT THE MAGPIE WAS EVER - EVER, YOU HEAR, WOMAN - A NICE BLOKE. AND WTF, QUITE GOOD COMPANY?! 

Out-bloody-rageous.

You will obviously do anything to besmirch a hard won reputation. Ann 'Attila The Hen'  Roebuck will no doubt - for once - wholeheartedly agree with The 'Pie. 

But a few small points are raised in your argumentum ad hominen missive, a truly sterling text book lesson in playing the man and not the ball, well worthy of a Walkley winning wordsmith like yourself. (For those not up with their Latin, argumentum ad hominen is an argument made personally against an opponent instead of against their argument.).  

It is an unusual oversight for such a highly decorated journo as yourself, but Kath, sweetie, in your uncharacteristic, foam-flecked rant, you fail to mention a single issue on which you base your free character reading, it just seems to be made up pf soft-focus, vague elements of all sins short of The 'Pie honking his hooter in the shower. 

1. The Magpie's professional opinion of you has nothing whatsoever to do with your personal/professional opinion of him. And it ain't personal, Kath, The 'Pie has no reason to grease you, it is just that you are in the public eye and therefore must accept whatever comes your way. That may, apparently much to your distress, include praise and congratulations from someone you see as much your inferior.  And a Walkley won by someone at The Bulletin is a thing of wonder in itself - or should The 'Pie ignore the journalist's pinnacle of professional achievement. Whether you like it or not, it should also be something of which the community can be proud. Hmmm, 'community' ...and 'pride' ... ah, perhaps that's your blind spot. 

2.You chide The 'Pie for a perceived 'inexplicable animosity towards bright young journalists you have never met'. That's a very curious statement - even ignoring the word 'bright' -  suggesting the old bird should personally know the people he writes about, and by clear inference, perhaps change his opinion of their work. 

The Magpie, and the now 18,000 pages that his readers open each month, know your 'bright, young journalists'  well enough through their work, which is on public display and open to comment. And that's the ONLY basis on which to judge them.

The Bulletin has always been arrogant about its former role as the sole gatekeeper of detailed information around here, which allowed the paper to occasionally get away with bloody blue murder. But galloping technology has changed all that. The paper itself coming under the microscope and being held to account for some of its snide policies and practices makes management very uncomfortable. And angry. 

There is a clear inference in your words that The Magpie blog is disdainfully dismissed and airly ignored by folks in Ogden Street, which means you have not been privy to the risible and pathetic half-arsed attempts to bully this blog into cowed silence. That includes your next boss becoming so frustrated with my accurate summation of his shenannigans that he tried to bully my completely uninvolved daughter (in Melbourne, for Christ sake), an idiocy for which News Ltd in Sydney forced him to personally apologise. 

3.' ... you run your anonymous blog based on 100% rumour and off-the-mark assumption.' This assertion is made in the grand old News Ltd tradition of offering not a scintilla of evidence, as they say in court. Not a single example of rumour that turned out to be untrue. Or an instance of an assumption that was off the mark. Just a 'shoot the messenger' basis, with not a single refutation of any issue raised by The Magpie.

There are no doubt some such examples, but they won't include the accurate forecast of further mass sackings at the paper - the first round of which in part prompted The Magpie's resignation from the paper. There was also the spot-on forecast that most of those jobs were to go south to Brisbane, all of which rated nary a mention in The Bulletin. And then there were the undeniable supression of other stories for commercial reasons - just some among the many more assumptions which strangely enough, turned out to be absolutely right. 

And I'm hardly anonymous - The Magpie ran every single Saturday in the Bulletin for eight years under the byline Malcolm Weatherup. In fact, when I made a joke concerning the editor's paranoid whinge about 'cowardly anonymous bloggers' you yourself, in the one email communication we've had in two and a half years, suggested exactly that - .'you're hardly anonymous, 'Pie '-- in exactly those words.

So if you wish The Magpie to stop 'endorsing (?)' you, stop winning Walkley's and start writing like some of your less stellar colleagues. Oops, that last bit's wrong, because that REALLY would attract the old bird's attention.

It seems you are slowly being coaxed over to the News Ltd dark side, Kath. To paraphrase a bit of your own purple prose,  ' ... it is not healthy for a person to live their life hanging onto the frayed strands of a sad future'.

But if that be so, when you head down to The Coast to join Typo, make sure you don't spend those 30 pieces of silver all at once.

Enough now, it is away to Poseurs' Bar, where The 'Pie hopes to bebubble some suitable companion with a view to her later playing the man ... and she can also play the - oh, never mind. No doubt the old bird is hanging on to the frayed  strands of a sad hope.