Our Prime Minister's Wine Cellars

News recently in from The Australian newspaper on the state of the wine cellars of our Prime Minister's two residences: Kirribilli and The Lodge. Apparently the wines are very boring and clapped out. That is debatable. Indeed, there are some more than drinkable Australian reds on the list - and a bit of good local riesling, too. The real question is volume. The Lodge has about 30 cases; Kirribilli a mere 17. Lord knows how they throw parties. Currently the Australian wine industry - which earns more than $2.5 billion in export per annum - is carrying about 100 million cases in surplus, thanks to a grape glut. The PM should show some leadership and start buying up.

Our Prime Minister's Vocabulary

And the PM should also consider very seriously the concept of "Word of the Day". Unfortunately of late his vocabulary relating to adjectives of the moral high-ground has become rather repetitious, not too mention ill-chosen, and sometimes illogical. This, of course, makes the PM's comments very funny, at least to those people who still finds words amusing - as opposed to those people who prefer to use words for cutting and pasting into their CVs and job descriptions.

Recently the PM referred to the effects of a natural disaster as "unspeakable". He went on about these effects for some time.

In a separate instance, regarding what he and many other people in positions of power consider to be preventable road fatalities, the PM has the other day commented that a particular car accident was a "sobering" reminder of something or other. I forget now exactly what. Perhaps I was too stunned by his choice of adjective. The accident in question involved a now dead driver who had been drinking. Most of his passengers died too.