Crass roads

GIVEN the British parliament's regicidal days appear to be far behind it, Blighty's political observers are obliged to look elsewhere for sources of political horror.

GIVEN the British parliament's regicidal days appear to be far behind it, Blighty's political observers are obliged to look elsewhere for sources of political horror.

British blogger and broadcaster Iain Dale appears to have hit pay dirt on our fair shores, shuddering on the BBC's news website over question time a la Canberra: "It is an absolutely shameful, horrific spectacle . . . I do like the adversarial system but the Australians take it to such an extreme that I just think it probably brings it into disrepute." He says it as if it's a bad thing. Let's just hope he doesn't check out the state of South Australian politics. To wit, this example of the Liberal-Labor dialogue: a press release from opposition road safety spokesman Mark Goldsworthy yesterday. Under the philosophical challenge of its headline - "Is Koutsy a 'knob or wanker'?" - the release raises some compelling points: "Road Safety Minister Tom Kenyon . . . has announced a new road safety campaign targeting 'knobs, roosters or wankers' on our roads. . . . I'm sure a number of South Australians will be offended by radio, television and online advertising featuring the words 'knobs and wankers'. Of course, former road safety minister Tom Koutsantonis was forced to resign from this portfolio for his more than 60 road and traffic offences. Mr Kenyon should explain whether Mr Koutsantonis is a 'knob or wanker'." This is, regrettably, just an edited version of a remarkably sustained performance. At the end of it, having mentioned "wanker" five times in the space of 211 words, Goldsworthy notes sombrely, "Mr Kenyon has quite the affinity with crass language."

Social discourse

SO the federal Coalition is clearly doing the right thing in getting in a Brit. Phillip Blond heads the think tank ResPublica, which has strongly influenced British PM David Cameron's "Big Society" agenda. Yesterday he was briefing Tony Abbott, Andrew Robb, Bronwyn Bishop and co at the Menzies Research Centre on the importance of social capital. Happily, most of his references to Australia were drawn from Disconnected, the book about social breakdown by former economics professor Andrew Leigh, who just happens now to be a Labor MP. This is the sort of thing that's bound to happen when you get in a bloke who rose to prominence with an essay titled Rise of the Red Tories. Meanwhile, our field agent tells that at one session Joe Hockey commented on the opposing challenges of politics v good policy in this concise and memorable way: "We all believe good policy comes first, ha ha, yeah."

Rough and stumble

KEVIN Rudd and the man he so hallucination-inducingly described this week as "my good friend" Mark Arbib will be participating in the St Vincent de Paul Society's annual CEO Sleepout. It's on June 16, tantalisingly close to the first anniversary of Rudd's Arbib-assisted exit from the prime minister's office. Let's just hope they don't redefine the expression "sleeping rough".

On the nose

ONCE upon a time, Fairfax Media vowed to do away with the auto-play function on the videos on its websites; not quite up there popularity-wise with the cure for polio, but not a million miles off, either. Thus far, however, it has proved to be a non-core promise, and just as well, for without it we would have been denied treats such as one on The Age website yesterday. The video accompanying the latest story about Victoria's outgoing deputy police commissioner and the Office of Police Integrity - "Bugged: Sir Ken Jones targeted by the OPI" - begins with an ad for Ambi Pur air freshener. As people pull faces and cover their noses, a voice frankly intones, "Some odours you can't ignore . . ."

Dark days

READER Sarah Capper raised an eyebrow at an email from Melbourne's Cinema Nova headed: "Suspense builds at Nova as Julia loses sight of what's really important." It was a plug for Guillermo del Toro's Julia's Eyes.

Pulling strings

REGULAR Strewth correspondent Russell Grenning has been giving much thought (arguably a little too much thought) to the Australian Chamber Orchestra's quest to name its Stradivarius (Strewth, yesterday). Grenning would like it named for the woman who this week utterly eclipsed the Julie Bishop death stare, Penny Wong: "Wong who, due to her earlier incarnation as climate change minister, would be undoubtedly aware of the theory the unique sound quality of these instruments was due to the unusual density of the wood. It has been suggested that during the Little Ice Age of the Maunder Minimum (circa 16451715), there was unusually low solar activity and the cooler temperatures in Europe led to slower and stunted tree growth in Europe, thus causing this unusual density. If we had had climate warming then nobody would even remember, much less appreciate, these instruments. So, stop global warming - in fact reverse it - and we may well get wood good enough for a new generation of superb violins." Without the original catgut strings, natch.