Now here’s a question for pollsters: “Lawyers, Journalists or Real Estate Agents – who do you least like?”

Conveyancing, divorce, “pre-auction bids”, “simultaneous exchange”, “extended settlement”, “bridging finance”, “custody agreements”; these are all part of what theoreticians call “the given”.

You put up with it because you have to.

And for those who work for a living there are — right now — Business Activity Statements, Quarterly Income Statements, DIY Superannuation Fund Quarterly Statements, Audit Certificates, “Where is that receipt?”, “What was that cheque for?”, “Is this a legitimate business expense?”, “Where can I get photocopies done on a Sunday?”. And the final consummation evokes Woody Allen’s to-camera utterance: “There are things worth than death. Have you ever had dinner with an accountant?”

You put up with it because you have to.

That’s not the point, say journalists. There is “the crisis”, “the outrage”, “the lie”, and “the evasion”, “mortgage stress”, “credit card stress”, “housing crisis”, “rental crisis”, “moral decline” and “a Shrek-driven obesity shock”.

And, of course, it’s all going to come tumbling down by 2020. This is because “they” (who are not journalists or lawyers) drive SUVs, live in McMansions and watch Big, Plasma Televisions. And this is very bad.

Al Gore says this, so it must be true:

An individual who spends four-and-a-half hours a day watching television is likely to have very different patterns of brain activity from an individual who spends four-and-a-half hours a day reading.

“Yo Al, Way to Go”, say the Clergy. The Rt Rev Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, was quoted as saying this in response to the British floods: “We are reaping the consequences of our moral degradation, as well as the environmental damage that we have caused.”

This is what Journalists accept as “the given”.

I don’t put up with it because I don’t have to.

Last night, after a 14-hour day I watched House, luxuriating in Political Correctness being shown the door and authority figures being booted up the date.

I was in the company of millions, many living in marginal electorates, who don’t give a “rats” about the precious prattling of Journalists.

Paul Comrie-Thomson is co-presenter of “Counterpoint” on Radio National.