Strewth: Choice words

Choice magazine has published a rough guide to appliance longevity, and the response has been hilarious.

Harry and Meghan at Abel Tasman National Park. Picture: AP

Choice magazine published a rough guide to appliance longevity last week, and the response has been hilarious.

Your mobile phone, for example, is meant to last about five years. Provided you don’t drop it. Or use it. Or store anything on it. Or count the battery. Your fridge? It should last a pathetic nine years, which set everyone off. The Choice Facebook page is filling up with people who still have a perfectly serviceable Frigidaire, or a Westinghouse, a Whirlpool, or a Sunbeam they got for their (mostly shotgun) wedding in the 1960s. The comments section is like a trip down memory lane. Wak Julet said: “Our fridge now is 38 years old, we bought it second-hand then … the only downside is I have to manually defrost it when the ice builds up.”

Remember that? Turning it off and hacking at the ice with knife? It’s what we did before airconditioners.

Radio static

Gosford’s rebel Anglican minister, Rod Bower, best known for posting really quite lame signs outside his NSW central coast church, intends to run for a Senate seat. Bower, whose new book, Outspoken, has the T shaped like a crucifix, is the kind of guy who posts Instagram memes of his own quotes. ABC types adore him, but it seems he doesn’t love them quite so much. Yesterday he announced he was to appear on “@abcsydney with @frankelly08.” Mike Carlton corrected him: “Rod, I think you mean Radio National.”

Kiwi correction

The royals have left for New Zealand, where Prince Harry immediately had crowds swooning with a direct reference to the unborn child: “From my wife, myself and our little bump, it’s a blessing to be here.” Aww. We’re still winning, however. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex gave a speech about women’s suffrage, commending the Kiwis for being first to give women the vote. But, ahem, Australia was first to grant full suffrage, meaning the right to vote and the right to stand for parliament, as you’ll discover in Clare Wright’s sizzling new history, You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians Who Won the Vote and Inspired The World.

Booked up

Speaking of books, remember when they were dead, and nobody could make a living writing them, especially not in Australia? Not so fast. Dymocks says nine of the books in this week’s top 10 are Australian, a feat no one can remember happening before. They are: The Lost Man by Jane Harper; Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty; No Spin by Shane Warne; Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak; The Price of Fortune by The Australian’s Damon Kitney; Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape; Johnathan Thurston: The Autobiography (with James Phelps), Barefoot for Families, also by Pape, and Leigh Sales’s Any Ordinary Day. Hurrah.

Scary logic

Also, boo! It’s Halloween tomorrow and the curmudgeons at Fairfax are all sour-faced, starting with Nicola Philp, who wrote the obligatory rodomontade: “Why is that we are so hellbent on adopting so much of American culture?”

By that logic, she’ll be urging us to give up Christmas next. Anyway, Halloween is not American. But hellbent it is.

Ag Minister makes hay

Agriculture Minister David Littleproud issued a press release, the purpose of which was to celebrate “300 days as Agriculture Minister”. Well, someone had to. To the text: “Minister Littleproud was sworn in as Agriculture Minister in late December 2017. He had a baptism of fire: the Senate disallowed part of the Murray Darling Basin Plan, the Senate had already rejected the Nationals plan for a Regional Investment Corporation and horrible footage surfaced of an Awassi live sheep voyage from August 2017.” But he has overcome all that, adding: “I won’t be the minister forever and I aim to keep working my butt off for as long as I’m in the minister’s chair.” We’d say congratulations but he seems to have done that himself.

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