The Outsider: Auto-complete fails, happy endings
This week, an innocent Isobel Redmond makes an unwanted appearance, we continue our love affair with irony, and Tiser readers all set their phones to vibrate.
Coalition of the willing
The State Government keeps an office full of worker bees who transcribe every bit of radio and television which might be of political interest.
Part of the service is a handy summary of items on ABC radio’s “World Today” program.
This Wednesday, it provided the following fairly depressing round-up – with one bizarre addition in dot point four:
A short time later they provided a correction – it was meant to be “IS”.
Damn you auto-complete. At least it wasn’t as widely distributed as Fairfax’s epic mistake this week.
Happy ending
The dear old Tiser publishes a page of “General Classifieds” each day – which is a euphemism for “adult relaxation services”, which is a euphemism for “massage”, which is a euphemism for … you get the idea.
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Often, there’s a complimentary ad for the Royal Flying Doctors (which seems odd placement), and sometimes they use the awkward space to pitch the Tiser’s mobile digital platforms.
However, as “a friend” pointed out, this approach might give the wrong impression to enthusiastic regular readers of the “General Classifieds” (no jokes about ring tones!).
Delicious
Just over a year ago, John Chapman was lecturing Tom Koutsantonis and his Labor buddies about the damage their policies were doing to the competitiveness of small business in SA.
Yesterday, Koutsantonis was slapping Chapman on the back after appointing him as Small Business Commissioner.
Chapman, a former head of the Motor Trades Association, is in Labor favour after he came on board as chief-of-staff to Martin Hamilton-Smith, the former Liberal leader turned unlikely member of the Weatherill Cabinet.
Chapman, in his MTA days, wasn’t very complimentary about the government’s approach to small business.
This quote, from April last year, is pretty typical (it’s about Labor’s deal to free up shopping hours in return for two new part public holidays): “… it’s another nail in the coffin for competitiveness of doing business in South Australia constructed by this Government”.
Also last year Chapman suggested the Government needed to slash about 20,000 public servants, which prompted this frosty rejoinder from Premier Jay Weatherill who noted the concept sounded remarkably like former Opposition Leader Isobel Redmond’s “plan” to cut 25,000 public sector jobs.
“It’s not surprising given the (MTA) chief executive is a former Liberal staffer,” Weatherill said.
Even more delicious is news that Hamilton-Smith will sit in as Treasurer while Koutsantonis takes a week off.
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Readers may recall the long-ago days when Kouts attempted to sue Hamilton-Smith – now they’re job sharing.
It’s called pragmatism people. Or can you suggest another word?
Yes we can!
Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi rocketed back into the limelight this week in tag-team effort with his close buddy and fellow South Australian, Family First Senator Bob Day.
In the midst of widespread alarm over the alleged terror-related attack on two police officers in Melbourne, these two thought it would be a good idea to put the Racial Discrimination Act back on the table. Tony Abbott had previously stepped back from a plan to water down race hate laws, in the interests of national harmony.
The pair’s plans appear to be going nowhere, but the affair reminded us to check up on Bernardi’s mostly forgotten effort to establish a conservative alternative to lefty-trendy ginger group GetUp!
CANdo is the group, and they seem to be struggling a bit to be taken seriously.
We checked out the “Suggestions” page on their website and it is full of creative thoughts including “Abbott Government MUST Crack Down on Defecation In Public”, and “Freedom Of Speech and Bigotry MUST be enshrined in Constitution”.
We assume those two are jokes. We assume.
However, we think these are serious. We think.
“Tony Abbott & The Illuminati – Questions That We Christians MUST Ask…”, “Write ‘Reduce Immigration’ on your ballot papers”, and our favourite, “ABC MUST Remove ‘Shitsville Express’”.
The Outsider appears in InDaily every Friday, digging into places where we’re not welcome, and probing Adelaide’s obsessions.
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