Fistful of dollars

WE know Barnaby Joyce has had the odd hiccup with billions and trillions in the past, but it's nice to see him attending carefully to what is surely a deliberate running gag.

WE know Barnaby Joyce has had the odd hiccup with billions and trillions in the past, but it's nice to see him attending carefully to what is surely a deliberate running gag.

Yesterday, he cranked out a press release fuming about "a gross federal debt of $183,801 billion"; this eye-watering figure was helpfully typed out in bold font. Not quite two hours later, the correction rolled in: "Please note in the previous media release: Gross debt is $183.801 billion not $183,801 billion." More Barnaby in just a moment, but first, a quick non-commercial break; we have to pace ourselves, you know.

Making waves

THERE must have been something in the air yesterday, for there was also a bit of fun figure-fudging going on over at Aunty. When ABC News's Twitter account shared this message, "Just in: Japanese state broadcaster NHK says a tsunami around 50cm is expected to hit Japan after earthquake this morning", someone tweeted on behalf of ABC Radio: "Do you mean 500cm? Seen warnings of half-metre tsunami." ABC News's response was as swift as it was dry: "50cm is half a metre." It all ended well, with ABC News tweeting, "Japan met agency says tsunami warning cancelled."

Joyce at it again

DESPITE Barnaby Joyce's accidental and expensive deployment of a comma instead of a decibel point (comma-nism never did come cheap), Joyce was mercifully undeterred from making any further announcements yesterday. The press release that followed the debt effort is worth quoting in full; picking a favourite line would be like being forced to pick your favourite child: "Well, I do not know whether William the Conqueror was governing for me when he knocked over poor old King Harold, but according to Tim Flannery he should have been. As absurd as it is, here is the quote, Res ipsa loquitur [the thing speaks for itself, for those of you not up to speed with your Latin] and 1000 years ago that would have been well understood around the castle. Professor Tim Flannery, the Commissioner for Climate Change, said on radio on Friday, 'If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as 1000 years . . .' By the time this proposed carbon tax has had its effect, Jesus will have come and gone, again! The two great mysteries in 1000 years time will be: Is Stefano DiMera from Days of Our Lives really dead? and, who in the Australian Labor Party honestly thought they could change the climate from a room in Canberra?" We believe the only appropriate thing to do here is bung on a CD and play Handel's Hallelujah chorus. Loudly.

One-line wonders

THINKING of NSW Labor is somewhat akin to pondering a once-cherished family dog that turned peculiar in its old age, declining from waggly-tailed charmer to serial leg-humper to cantankerous biter of children; in the end, there was nothing for it but to take it for a stroll down the back paddock with two barrels under the arm. That said, we are stuck on outgoing premier Kristina Keneally's concession speech, particularly "The people didn't leave us, we left them", a possible semi-channelling of Ronald Reagan's "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the party left me". Given that in the past week, Laborites have been quoting John Howard approvingly and Tony Abbott slagged off Richard Nixon a bit, it could be part of a pattern.

Name dropping

WE gather this one's been kicking around on the classical music blog Proper Discord for a couple of weeks, but as we only just discovered it, it counts as, ahem, fresh. Anyway, if you ever want to put Australian squabbles about elites into some sort of perspective, visit the website of London's Royal Opera House and register yourself. Awaiting you will be the usual fields: name, title and so on. Click on "title" with an Australian's grimly egalitarian expectation of little more than Mr, Ms and so on, and be dazzled by a dropdown menu laden with choices as opulent as marquess, brigadier, viscount, sultan, dowager marchioness and even king. We'll be erring on the side of modesty and awarding ourselves the rank of group captain.

Sledging nuisance

SOME carefully phrased advice on internet rudeness from Charlie Brooker in The Guardian, written in the wake of the mass sledging of a teenager who had the temerity to record a song and post it on YouTube: "God knows I enjoy a helping of bile. But only when it's crafted with flair. One of the most disappointing things about the slew of online Rebecca Black abuse is the sheer poverty of language involved. If you are complaining about a banal pop song but can't muster a more inventive way to express yourself than typing 'OMFG BITCH YOU SUCK', then you really ought to consider folding your laptop shut and sitting quietly in the corner until that fallow lifespan of yours eventually reaches its conclusion." If Paul Keating starts offering similarly styled master classes in political correspondence, we'll be seeing the moon from above.

James Jeffrey