After Grog Blog: SYDNEY GREENSTREAK

I'd like to introduce Sydney. Actually, Sydney's not his real name ... duh ... just a cunning alias that seemed to fit. You see, Syd's a Greenie, is happily overweight -- although once, he nearly bought a pack of Limits -- and ... well ... he lives in Sydney.

Don't get me wrong, Syd's a good friend of mine and I like him a lot, BUT ... Syd's a lefty. He also barracks for Collingwood.

So, in response to Andrew Bolt's most recent sap-sucker slap-down:

Barking on about religion

FASTER and faster it grows, this religion of tree worshipping.

Last month, the course co-ordinator of the National Theological Centre, which trains new Anglican priests, was calling for an "ecological Lent".

And now the Age has shown, amen, there really are people who seem to believe trees have souls, dreams and feelings.

Here are some quotes from a three-part series on the "life, death and afterlife" of a eucalypt, the Age chose out of the great East Gippsland forests to immortalise as a symbol of man's inhumanity to trees.

"The Errinundra chainsaw massacre", the page one headline wailed. And who wouldn't wail at the killing of such an amazingly human tree?

"In human years, the tree is now middle-aged.

"It's approaching the prime of its life, says zoologist Stephen Henry", who has "that gentle manner often found in people who spend a lifetime studying plants and animals".

"But it no longer thinks it will open the batting for Australia or play centre-half forward for Hawthorn. That touch of reality may have crept in, but it's still got a lot of years left in it . . .