Browned off

WITH his latest efforts that have seen him link the coal industry to the catastrophic floods, it seems Greens leader Bob Brown is determined to kickstart an industry in Brown-shaped pinatas; though presumably if they're made from recycled paper the ever self-effacing Brown will be cool with it.

In the meantime, the Brown-bashing has proceed apace and the award for most inventive effort thus far goes -- no real surprises here -- to Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce: "Brown's statement that the recent floods were caused by, and should be paid for by, the coal industry, or to use his terminology 'coal barons' is an absurd provocative, clumsy and factually incorrect statement. It is obviously made as an incendiary call to arms for what he believes his followers wish to hear. Why the coal industry? Well I guess we can thank small graces that he did not blame it on people with large forearms or people of Welsh descent." A quick breath to collect ourselves, and now let's continue: "If the coal industry caused the current floods, then I presume we will put the 1841 floods down to gold mining, the 1893 floods to tin mining and I don't know who we will blame the 1974 floods on but I reckon the Bay City Rollers are as good as any." As the Bay City Rollers put it in Bye Bye Baby (no, we don't know it off by heart; we looked it up): "If you hate me after what I say/ Can't put it off any longer/ I just gotta tell ya anyway."

The first one's free

WHILE not quite as radical as News Limited columnist Piers Akerman nearly praising Kevin Rudd (Strewth, Saturday), it was nice to hear Tony Abbott saying something positive, in a carefully worded kind of way, about the shadow opposition yesterday while talking about the response to the floods: "I think it's important for governments at all levels to draw on relevant business expertise and I'm pleased that the Gillard government, in this instance, looks like doing so." Before things got too lightheaded, Abbott got it all back on track by calling for the canning of the National Broadband Network on the grounds it's "going to involve some $50 billion plus of government spending and the point I make is that when you've got an absolutely urgent and unavoidable spending commitment, you don't go ahead with unnecessary and avoidable spending commitments and that's what the NBN is". However, there is another approach, as demonstrated this week by Innovation Minister Kim Carr, who has more than lived up to the promise of his portfolio name by substituting an M for a B in a price tag in a press release and subsequently making everything look like a steal: "Welcoming the signing of the contracts that help bring the NBN a step closer to reality, Carr . . . said he was delighted the contracts, which total $1.6 million, were being awarded to three companies with significant operations in Australia." Let's get a dozen.

Good on paper

BUT is the NBN entirely necessary? We're surprised to find some ambivalence emanating from Julia Gillard's website, of all places. Click on the blogs page of pm.gov.au and you are presented with a photo of our beloved leader writing on paper. With ink. At least it doesn't crash.

Vowel cancer

AS a Strewth reader, you are undoubtedly tapped into the world (which doesn't sound all that comfortable, spelled out) and aware that in the US, the Republican National Committee has a new chairman by the most excellent name of Reince Priebus. New Yorker (and twitterer) Peter Flom has made the sort of small but important discovery that Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson would be proud of: take out all the vowels and you're left with RNC PR BS. That will be a tough one for the Democrats to top, but we're not without faith they can.

Whatever

NORMALLY, when a press release contains a publication embargo, it's straightforward; sometimes stern, not necessarily reasonable, but straightforward. So it's nice to see a bit of qualification, such as in a release that lobbed in our inbox after 10pm on Monday night: "The embargo has been put for Tuesday tomorrow, but since midnight is just about upon us, if it does happen to end up on ABC 24 as breaking news, that is OK with us."

Sainted cephalopod

WHEN Paul the octopus and soccer World Cup clairvoyant died, it seemed all too soon; if he'd lived longer, we could have asked him who'd win the next batch of World Cup hosting bids and, in the process, saved ourselves 40 odd million bucks and perhaps even the heart of Frank Lowy. As it was, when Paul finally turned up his sucker cups in his German aquarium last October, we simply assumed, given the Teutonic lack of sentimentality about flesh, that he'd wind up in a ceremonial salad (we'd heard about green funerals and overextrapolated). Happily, we were wrong; there will instead be a shrine. As wire service Agence France Presse describes it touchingly, "There will be a statue around 1.8m high of Paul, on top of a football, in the middle of which will be a see-through window with the golden urn containing Paul's ashes." It's surely what he would have wanted.