Winemakers' Cavalier Approach to Procreation

The Economist recently (23rd November) ran a front cover headline which read: "China: who's in, Hu's out".

I laughed myself silly at such a bad and insensitive play on words.

And so subject lines like the following one from the Winemakers' Federation of Australia's self-same email are to be encouraged:

"Winemakers already moving on pregnancy warnings"

One can only wonder where these winemakers are all moving to?

My uncle lost an old mate to Alice Springs once, when the latter's romantic life became a little hectic, but I can't think what winemakers would do in such a town.

$2 Milk and $750 Wine

The Wall Street Journal reports that a Barossan shiraz is now Australia’s most expensive wine, at about $750 a bottle, or $1 per millilitre. Torbreck’s The Laird, 2005 vintage. Apparently all 400 cases have sold out. Quite a lot of it went to Hong Kong, where the wine’s importer commented “All the big collectors in Hong Kong, they’re not idiots, they know what they’re drinking, they know what they’re buying, and they love wine.” Or commodities.

Everyone – and maybe even the Wall Street Journal – reports that supermarket-branded milk is now $2 per three litre container, or $0.00067 a millilitre. Using this information one can clearly demonstrate the agricultural and economic differences between a cow in a paddock and a shiraz vine in a vineyard: volumetrically it’s 99.93 cents per millilitre, to the cow’s disadvantage. Thank goodness therefore for the two over-arching truisms of economics: markets correct themselves, and competition is good. But you don’t see a lot of milking cows in economics lectures, do you…

Yet these are piffling matters when one considers the crimes against humanity being committed by other arms of the supermarket gods. A chain of wine stores bought quite a lot of Penfold’s Bin 389 – or ‘Baby Grange’ as it is known, thanks to the fact it is only a tenth as awful as Grange proper. They then proceeded to sell it below the wholesale price they bought it for. This loss-leader mechanism is designed to increase foot traffic in one’s store, thus capitalizing on impulse purchases of products with more positively geared profit margins. Yet the man from Penfold's who runs the Bin 389 spreadsheet was not amused. He thought that this discounting would damage the integrity of Bin 389's brand. (What effect it might have on the integrity of Bin 389's quality as wine is all together another, less important matter.) He immediately instructed his staff to stop updating their facebook pages and go forth charged with company credit cards and buy up all the loss-leader Bin 389. What a decision it must have been for the staff: ‘Do I stop facebooking myself, or do I use the company credit card?’ Well they used the credit cards and bought back about a tenth of their stock at a price lower than they’d sold the stock to the wine store chain in the first place. Admittedly the economics are revolutionary, but this is cleary a win for the wine store chain.

It is not an original idea, however. This outstandingly innovative business concept mirrors that of many of Mr. Penfold’s grape suppliers, who, of course, are only to happy to sell Mr. Penfold and his friend Mr. Foster wine grapes at below-cost-of-production prices. It is the future of business and through it we might all yet be saved. There’s such romance and moral purity found in wine.

Where The Flavour Is

Volume 49 of the Chamber's Winery newsletter has just landed. It contains sad news for sherry connoisseurs:

Our sincere apologies, particularly for our long time customers, if you missed this in our last edition but our Dry Flor Sherry is now only available in 750ml bottles. We no longer supply either flagons or containers. We fully understand the impact of this decision…

On the other hand the newsletter lifted any true gourmet’s heart with this recipe:

Cross cut a whole Camembert Cheese and soak in our Mt Carmel Port overnight in the fridge. Return to room temperature then add 125g of butter, beat then pat back into the original circle shape and encrust with flaked almonds. Serve with drinks.

Forget the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival Hydra, and forget little half bottles of Manzanilla, and forget Fair-Trade wafers topped with an artisinal anchovy fillet and a dob of tomato concasse, Chambers is where the flavour is.

Making Proper Use Of Sommeliers

The new year started extremely well, with the following advice about sommelier use coming from the 1st of January's edition of my favourite piece of right-wing fruit-cakery, The Spectator.

My wife would like to get angry and throw a glass of wine over me; what would you recommend?

We can now all return to restaurants with confidence. What fools we have been in 2010 and further back, asking sommeliers moronic questions about food and wine matching.

The Ultimate Flavoured Vodka, and just in time for Xmas...

SPUTNIK VODKA GLOBAL BRAND AMBASSADOR TO VISIT AUSTRALIA BY SPACE SHUTTLE

Sputnik Vodka's Global Brand Ambassador, Yuri Kalashnikov, will make a flying visit to Australia this Christmas – by Space Shuttle – to personally launch the new and exciting Hi-Carb, Full-Isotope, Onion-Flavored Vodka - Sputnik Cossack Maxi+ ™.

Mr. Kalashnikov will be visiting with his private football team and a collection of Eastern European typists and dictationistas. He will be available for interviews and photo-essays.

Sputnik Cossack Maxi+ ® will be released solely on-premise, at $98.17 RRP, and 110% proof.

Mr. Kalashnikov says he looks forward to "meeting of Australia women, for killing your wild white shark of water, and for to be eating much of your most fearsome bear - the koala monkey. This trip is pleasure, not business."

CEO of London’s International Soft-Drink and Spirits Competition ©, Charles Rupert-Roberts, has described Sputnik Cossack Maxi+ © as “the drink of the 21st Century”. Mr. Rupert-Roberts went on to say that “the Sack” (as Sputnik Cossack Maxi+ ™ has come to be known on the American College Mixology circuit) is “refreshing, demanding, easy, complex, versatile and uncompromisingly spontaneous. It is the essence of global liquor positioning.”

Sputnik Cossack Maxi+ ® and its secret, unique blend of carbohydrates, isotopes, and onion is set to bring the coming summer Down Under to life!!! Great on its own, it is also a perfect mixer, and stunning with food-matching, as an aperitif, or just on its own.

For further information, media packs, or hi-resolution images, please contact:
Fleur Slazenger-Du Pont: ✆ 0404 040404
For interview opportunities with Mr. Kalashnikov, please contact:
Bree Stuyverstánt-Stuyverstánt: ✆ 0414 141414
Read My Lips Media & Communications
2/14a Pashmina Mews, Potts Point, Sydney, NSW

***ENJOY CONSUMING MODERATION RESPONSIBLY***

Five Things To Do With...

Lifestyle lift-outs love nothing more than a list. And I’ve certainly composed my share of such silly lists over the last decade. “Five Things To Do With a Throw Rug”. “Five Things To Do With a Vegetable Peeler”. “Five Things To Do With Pinot Gris”. Good Lord. There’s only one thing to do with pinot gris, of course, and that’s to purposefully mis-pronounce it at every opportunity: penis grease. One certainly wouldn’t drink it. Some things must separate us from the anmal kingdom, after all.

Today a colleague at my office pointed out another “Five Things” list. It concerned coffee; yet all the advice was wrong, wrong, wrong. Here’s the correct list:

Five Things To Do With Coffee

1. Put a deposit on it or ask about lay-by options.

2. Be seen with it, perhaps at the races or a charity event.

3. Keep the beans under lock and key, lest they be accidentally run through your $1500 espresso machine, thereby rendering it unphotographable.

4. Use it as a platform for such word usage as ‘barista’, ‘fair-trade’, ‘free-trade’, ‘organic’, ‘biodynamic’, and other such bits of jargon-monoxide.

5. Get it loudly and terribly wrong.

Dutch aboriginality...

Andrew Bolt - or Andronicus Van Bolt as he is for some strange reason known in my office - is in trouble. Every second person you meet in the street is angry with him over his published opinions about Aboriginality. He wondered aloud if someone who has virtually no Aboriginal blood can claim to be Aboriginal. He wondered why some writers, artists, academics and activists claim Aboriginality when they were more Caucasian, at least in terms of their DNA, hairdos, looks and surnames. He commented ''I'm not saying any of those I've named chose to be Aboriginal for anything but the most heartfelt and honest of reasons. I certainly don't accuse them of opportunism.'' Which is the nicest way I've ever heard anyone ever accuse anyone else of opportunism in my life.

Yet this - I now realize all too clearly - is just a smoke screen. The real topic here is not Aboriginality in its Australian guise, but aboriginality full stop.

Andrew Bolt, born here in Australia, is of Dutch parentage. He once said "Like most of you, I'm indigenous. I was born here and have nowhere else to go." If one is indigenous one is born or produced naturally in a land or region. The term usually applies to aboriginal inhabitants or natural products. Lower case 'a' aboriginals are people who are strictly native, if we are sticking strictly to dictionary definitions. Which makes me realize that none of the writers, artists, academics, activists or Bolts mentioned herein are either indigenous or aboriginal, in the strictest sense. They are all - more or less - recent imports.

That we live in a time when it is trendier to be Aboriginal than it is to be Dutch should not cause us so much fuss. Perhaps if Mr. Bolt only said nice things about people more of us would want to identify as Dutch, regardless of how much or how little Dutch blood we had.

Greed Guides

It is the time of year for greed guides. Recently Uncle Bulgaria’s Wine Companion hit the shelves, and hit them in a way that the shelves certainly knew they were hit. This annual guide to Australian wine is a wonderful phone book, should anyone wish to contact the wineries listed. It also subtly suggests those wineries which make good wine and those wines which are of high quality. It does this by giving every winery listed a 5 Star rating out of 5 Stars, and giving all the wines listed a score out of 100 points. This score is either 95, or 96, or 97, or 98. Or possibly 99, or 100, or even 101. I know it sounds complex, but with the book in your hands everything makes instant sense. Proper wines for proper postcodes. If only we had such a guide to boat people.

The other guide about to set us all violently right is The Good Food Guide. This is another good phone book, albeit a lot of the numbers listed no longer answer. It is also a very useful dictionary of synonyms. Scan through the book and you will come across more ways to say ‘ambience’ than you thought possible, which is a very handy thing. If ambience were mere ambience then goodness knows what might happen next. Restaurant goers might soon start thinking a potato is just a potato.

If only wine guides could encourage people to not think in terms of scores, and if only restaurant guides could teach people how to actually eat in a restaurant, then they might prove to be useful publications yet.

Black Tot Day

On this day 40 years ago sailors suddenly had no more reason to go to sea. On the 31st July 1970, at 11am – or 6 bells during the forenoon watch – the Royal Navy ladled out their last tots of rum to each and every seaman afloat. An eighth of a pint – about 70mls – was the measure, although when rum tots first appeared around 1731 each man received a half pint – and that was a pre-Imperial half pint, so roughly 235mls.

Between 1731 and 1970 the tot went through various service manifestations. After a while it was watered down at a ratio of 3 parts rum to 1 part water, then 2:1; the tot was also broken into two serves – morning and evening; and it even had lime juice added to help prevent scurvy. A kind of prescription Mai Tai…

But in the end Britain’s House of Commons decided that modern war ships had too much gadgetry in them to be operated safely by drunken sailors. The tot was abolished, replaced by an extra can of beer per man per day. Which going all the way back to 1731 was what rum had itself replaced – a wine gallon of beer a day was the sailor’s right in the early 18th Century. A wine gallon? Yes, about 3.7 litres. Or 10 stubbies. It was small beer, though, roughly 2.5% alcohol by volume. Which I think makes it sound even worse. Try drinking 10 stubbies of light beer day in day out and see how intellectually uplifted you become…

It would be nice to think there is a navy somewhere still serving the daily tot of rum, but I’m not sure. The Royal Australian Navy abolished the rum tot in 1921 – the first Commonwealth country to do so. We’ve been a bunch of Nannies longer than I thought.

The Shockeroos

The poor Australian football team. Losing 4 – 0 to Germany in the opening match of their world cup campaign will be a loss too far, it seems. At least if they are dubbed the ‘Shockeroos’, it will grate less in the minds of real football supporters than their current team nickname – the Socceroos. Football is football, not soccer. Even that Americanism, ‘soccer mom’, is more palatable than ‘Socceroos’.

A win was always impossible against Germany; a draw would have been biblical; a 1 – 0 loss would have been thought proud; but 4 – 0… Blame has to be found. And it looks like the team’s Dutch coach, Pim Verbeek, is the one. He made selection errors, it is claimed, and no one is prepared to forgive him. This is a sad state for this rakish and charismatic man to find himself in. How quickly the tide of public sentiment has turned against ‘Aussie Pim’, as he came to be known during his brief but very media-friendly engagement to Lleyton Hewitt.

Western Samoan footballer, Tim Cahill, who was sent off in the game’s 56th minute, will now miss Australia’s next must-win match against Ghana, known colloquially as the ‘Black Stars’. Cahill, or ‘Aussie Tim’ as he became popularly known during his brief but much admired engagement to Australian tennis ace, Lleyton Hewitt, seems the only player in the squad likely to score, and a 0 – 0 result against Ghana will not do.

But how amusing would it be if from Group F, the New Zealanders - I'm sorry, the All Whites - should get through to the next round...

Her Majesty's Birthday. Not.

June is nearly upon us, featuring as it does Her Majesty’s Birthday’s public holiday, on the second Monday of the month. Her Majesty’s actual birthday falls – as all Australians know, of course – on the 21st April. Why Australia’s dutiful and respectful observance of its monarch’s birthday occurs on this June date is down to rather odd circumstances. Until very, very recently – 1936 – our monarchs’ birthday public holidays were celebrated on the actual day of birth, a tradition which goes back to one of the earliest tourists to this country, Governor Arthur Philip, who established the day in 1788, to mark the birthday of George III, which is – as of course we all know – the 4th June. Yet 148 years later, following His Majesty George V’s passing (20th January; His birthday was 3rd June, of course), the date was set in administrative stone, and for some strange reason those administrators chose the second Monday in June. Contrary to some popular theories held by silly old people, this second Monday in June is not the day formerly known as Empire or Commonwealth Day, which was Queen Victoria’s birthday, the 24th May. Be all that as it may, the second Monday in June is what we now have. I for one would like to see public holidays (without pay) observed for all our monarchs’ birthdays, going back to, say, 1603. It would amount to 17 public holidays a year, the majority of them falling in late May, early June, and November. Perhaps I am far too forward-thinking when it comes to recognizing these birthdays? Yet that is the bold spirit to embrace – to dare to dream of a better and more enlightened future for us all. An Australia anew.

Raise a Glass, or perhaps a Caffé Latte

Poor old ANZAC Day. What a transformation it has undergone.

When I was little, in that unfortunate decade, the 1970s, Dawn Service was attended by old returned servicemen – men who had gone to war and many of whom had fought. Following the Service – at places like Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance – the old soldiers would totter off to a few pubs holding early morning liquor licences, where from about 7am beer was served and drunk.

As the decade wore on the number of diggers dwindled. Occasionally the ANZAC Day parade would get into the news, particularly if demonstrators placarded the march, complaining that it glorified the horrors of war.

By the end of the century, however, how things had changed. A new generation of Australians so distantly and remotely linked to war took to ANZAC Day like an RSL regular to his club’s bar. On the 25th of April at Shrines around Australia stood tens of thousands of people; Gallipoli resembled a Bledisloe Cup fixture.
With this popular swing in favour of the Day there have also come some strange attendants.

Near Melbourne’s Shrine sits Café Vue – an offshoot of the internationally acclaimed restaurant in Melbourne’s city centre, Vue du monde. It released this electronic message a few days before ANZAC Day this year:

“With the endorsement of the RSL, Café Vue at 401 St Kilda Road will be open on Anzac Day, Sunday 26th April from 5am for express coffee and pastries and from 7am with a full liquor license and breakfast menu. We are pleased to offer all serving and ex-service Defence Force members a 50% discount on food and beverage from 5am to midday.”

For some strange reason this information unsettled me. I turned off the computer and turned on the television. Very quickly an ad came on featuring General Peter Cosgrove, former Chief of the Australian Defence Force. He was sitting in a pub with a glass of beer. A couple of blokes stood in the background doing ditto. Cosgrove encouraged the viewer to ‘raise a glass’ on ANZAC Day and remember or donate to the "Raise a Glass" cause.

This is not a new campaign; indeed, “Raise a Glass” got into trouble in 2009 when the Queensland RSL refused to take part in it, stating that it thought it linked ANZAC Day to problem binge drinking. Oh, Victoria Bitter is the ‘sponsor’; the beer’s cartons come with commemorative decals for the ANZAC period, and the brewer donates money to the RSL and Legacy. They hope to raise $1.3 million in 2010.

I wonder what Sir John Monash – Australia’s greatest army commander, and the man who did so much to establish ANZAC Day and supervise the planning of Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance – would have to say about these new developments.

Mark Webber for PM

"It's a great country, but we've got to be responsible for our actions..."

Even without context this comment should be applauded by any right-thinking individual. Yet this has got nice Mark Webber - the racing car driver originally from Queanbeyan in the ACT - into problems with Victoran government ministers and servants - AKA policeman.

Mr. Webber - upon returning to his home country to appear in the Formula 1 race in Melbourne - thought that Australia was now suffering from the affliction known as 'nanny government'. This is a condition in which citizens of their country are excessively governed and monitored and regulated by the very government they freely elect.

Mr. Webber made his nanny state comments in relation to speeding limits, parking regulations, and - one can only imagine - other aspects of local government road rules that so annoy any free spirit in charge of a motor vehicle. He complained about ''dodging the ridiculous speeding and parking [rules] and all the nanny-state [conditions] that we have down here in Australia''.

Yet he was also more broad-ranging in his thoughts:

"''I think we've got to read an instruction book when we get out of bed - what we can do and what we can't do … put a yellow vest on and all that sort of stuff...''

His off the cuff comments didn't suit the new moral crusaders, however. Taking time out from ad nauseum 'when-are-you-people-going-to-learn' remarks, various policemen and government ministers attacked Mr. Webber's free thought.

Deputy Police Commissioner Ken Lay said some of Webber’s fans were alive because of Victoria’s aggressive approach to road safety.

‘‘We’ve got probably one of the best road safety track records in the world, so I make no apology for our aggressive approach,’’ he told a local radio station.

No apology. Aggressive indeed. This is the voice of the self-empowered moral high groundsmen. Mark Webber made a observation, based on his experience as a international journeyman and - no doubt - from a fond remembrance of his younger life here in Australia.

But that has all changed. In the future whether young men from Queanbeyan grow up to become F1 drivers is neither here nor there; but if they grow up and cannot question the laws that govern their existence, then we might all just as well hand our car keys in now.

February: a Dry Area

We are nearly at the end of February, and therefore at the end of the ridiculous month-long statement of sanctimonious self-importance that is Feb Fast. This cause sees participants abstain from alcohol for the month, and like Movember and other such awareness months, the idea is to raise money for charities which support people suffering from some sort of ailment or social disease, such as drug addiction, mental health problems, and so on. The outcome - that monies go from the private purse into these charitable organisations - is all fine and good, and Feb Fast has already raised a half a mill. But what an annoying month of self-aggrandizing puff the rest of us have to put up with, and not just from common or garden-variety goody-goodies telling us why they are not drinking, but also from would-be celebrities who use the awareness cause as a shameless, self-promotion exercise.

The Feb Fast website even includes a Famous Feb Fasters feature, to assist this strategy. One of the celebs is Angry Anderson…

Celebrity and charity now go hand in hand, particularly as charity is such an effective way to maintain a public profile. And your PR Agent will probably "do the right thing" and not charge you for letting the media know about your passion for high-profile charitable causes. So it’s a win-win for everything and everyone. Except perhaps quiet philanthropy. And publicans

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.

A Restaurant Guide

This week two otherwise educated and charming acquaintances demonstrated in all too keen a way a new horror emerging in our tolerant society. They told me they were going out to restaurant X; they asked me what I thought of the place and what they should order. Of course, given my professional reputation for “blistering honesty”, I was not surprised by their request for information. I dealt it out and off they went, I hope enlightened.

The frightening problem here it that it seems people no longer know how to use restaurants. This may be because more and more people are going out to more and more restaurants – there has been a dilution of quality, if you like. Or it could be that what with our sleepless worry over climate semi-change we have lost a sense of proper etiquette and manners. This would be a terrible shame. I’ve always thought that come the end of times such things as manners, the ability to say please and thank you, not too mention correctly adjusted neck-ties, should be of the utmost importance.

Yet back to restaurant use.

Restaurants have front doors and you should enter them that way, and boldly so. Do not linger; if you are not attended to within 30 seconds or so, leave. Go home and cook yourself a proper dinner.

Of course one can make a reservation for a restaurant table. Always book under a leading restaurant critic’s surname, or full name if you like. Yes, this is very undergraduate, but one must remember what one is actually doing – paying good money and wasting valuable time out of the home, eating someone else’s food. Only a half-drunk undergraduate would do that.

Once seated refuse any offer of the menu and ask for the wine list. Order a pre-dinner drink if you like, but please be cognisant of the fact this drink will cost more than the main course. Restaurateurs have to make money somehow.

Once you’ve had a drink, ask for the menu. Do not choose what you rather ridiculously imagine you might like to eat, but instead employ a process of elimination to find what is safe.

Unless you are in Italy, do not order antipasto. Whether in Italy or not, do not order risotto. Risotto can only be cooked at home. (The claim that risotto should not be cooked at all I can understand, but I think that’s taking things one step too far.)

Never order anything deep-fried; that is what fish and chip shops are for. Do not order anything “inspired”: Thai-inspired mussels, Japanese-inspired chicken, Spanish-inspired ox tongue. No. Do not order “signature” dishes. Never ask a waiter or waitress what they think is best. Never order a “tasting plate”, and degustation menus are for self-important and pompous lifestyle warriors – who are the people one most observes in restaurants.

Ignore the main course dishes and if the restaurant offers “shared plates”, get up and walk out. Stick to the entrees. Order a light one for the first course and a richer one for main. Women may order a dessert course, but no matter what your gender, do not order cheese. It is always too cold, unlike the beer a restaurant might sell. Speaking of drink, order a bottle of pinot noir, or burgundy as it was once called. Wines ordered by the glass are an admission of failure and a sign of general moral decrepitude. Pay by cash and always tip ten per cent. Lunch is preferable; dinner brings out the amateurs.

And the most important rule: never go to a restaurant you haven’t been to before.

Bogus December Lists

What is it about the month of December and the sudden appearance of so many bogus lists? Best Sporting Moments of the Year, Best Free-Range Frozen Turkey Buffet Brands, Top Ten Christmas TV Specials… These lists become a list in themselves.

Besides their obvious vacuity, the problem with these lists is that they rarely offer any educative thought. They conform to what is considered to be informed and intelligent, rather than shooting straight. A classic case in point comes from the perennial list of Best Books. For some strange reason James Joyce’s Ulysses is always near the top, despite the fact it is tiresomely long and rambling, and makes zero sense. People feel the need to demonstrate their literary chic, however, hence this silly book’s powerful list-iosity.

To this end the only list we really need is a list of things one should do their utmost to avoid or ignore, to wit:

Bono
Margarine
Discussion of climate change
James Joyce
The entire newspaper, excepting the Letters to the Editor
Brunch – whatever that is
Going out at night
Lycra cycling costumes
Most wind instruments
Balinese resorts

I could expand on these points, and joyfully so, but the sort of people I’m interested in talking to will require no explanation.

Shooting self-harmers and re-joining the twins

It doesn't take long to skim through the office newspapers. They offer a pretty dreary account of alleged news. And the radio news bulletin in the work vehicle I cannot bring myself to turn on too often as I'm so thoroughly sick of bushfire-tragedy-catastrophe reportage.

Yet occasionally a news item or a headline can catch the ear or eye; and it can't but help bring a smile to my cranky face.

The big newspaper had this header during the last week:

Police Shoot Man Attempting Self Harm.

They have since changed the headline online to something less hysterically funny, which I think is a great shame.

Headline writers though are not the only ones unintentionally coming up with some good comedy.

After 32 hours of surgery the formerly conjoined twins from Bangladesh - Trishna and Krishna - have come out of their induced comas and have blown raspberries - or whatever the Bangladeshi version of raspberry blowing is - at medical staff. But that's not the funny bit. Now that the two little girls are awake and "neurologically sound", what have their nurses done? Pushed their cots together.

Working Up A Thirst

At the end of a recent newspaper article came this one final hurdle:

“The Roy Morgan research was based on a telephone survey last month with a random sample of 687 people aged 14 years and over.”

One’s response to this information neatly divides humanity into two groups: those curious about the story behind the research, and those cranky about such drivellingly small research sample numbers.

I’m in the second camp, and I don’t think it really matters what this research was about. Yet to assuage the ever-curious let me tell: the research concerned “Two Million Australians [who] Drink Before Ten.”

Put this way the research seems quite damning. What sort of a country do we live in where only two millions of us are drinking before 10pm each night? What a bunch of lemon-tea drinking pussies we’ve become.

But it’s not that sort of ten. It is not ten o’clock in the post-meridian; but rather ten years old in the scale of life. The research indicated that two million Australians under the age of ten are drinking alcohol in some way, shape or form. And the concern extrapolated is that these children run a very great risk of developing drinking problems later in life.

The Church and the Government and some new regulations and federal health guidelines all had something to do with this story, too; but let’s put that to one side. I want to get back to the real problem. The research.

Firstly, I’m not going to be all hiss and spit about these findings – certainly not. Indeed in one regard I take my hat off to this man Roy Morgan.

Admittedly he had a month, but randomly ringing up 687 people over the age of 14 and asking them if they’d had a drink before they were ten and then asking them – should the response come in the affirmative – if they are now a barrister or are they now unemployed with a drinking problem, well, as I think we can all see, it’s top-rate data-gathering. Based on such data the research findings are as irrefutable as the existence of the newspaper article itself.

Yet on the other hand - what a world. What a statistical and interpretive achievement to bend a logarithm so much that it can turn 687 people over the age of 14 into 20 million Australians. And what a fabulous mathematical formula must it be to account for all of those Australian who don’t have a phone or don’t answer it – or who tell Roy Morgan to stop ringing them at dinner time and to please delist their number form his data base…

This is yet more chicken-before-egg sort of stuff. It’s designed to keep massaging the guilt-trip-come-moral-imperative of alcohol abuse along through the news media. No doubt such research keeps this Roy Morgan chap in gold-plated spats, but I wonder how it serves to save a single person from a career in alcohol.