Poor little rich guy

IT looks as if Business Review Weekly wants to make it up to Malcolm Turnbull for revealing he's on BRW's Rich 200 list.

IT looks as if Business Review Weekly wants to make it up to Malcolm Turnbull for revealing he's on BRW's Rich 200 list.

The magazine has kindly gathered advice from Australia's leading spin doctors, marketing gurus and personal brand consultants, no less, on how Turnbull can pull the wool over the electorate's eyes and make himself more attractive. In today's BRW, these experts recommend that he repositions himself as softer and more caring. Fair dinkum. They suggest replacing dark pinstripe suits - in Turnbull's case, that would mean his entire wardrobe - white shirts and a red ties with silver-grey suits to suit what remains of his hair, and pale blue or off-white shirts and ties with subtle curved or pin-dot patterns. That should do the trick. They also suggest Turnbull should work on overcoming the perception he's part of Sydney's wealthy elite. Perhaps he should move back into a rented flat.

If it isn't one thing ...

WE realise South Australian Premier Mike Rann is becoming omnipresent in the column but can't resist his treatment of blogger Max Bolton on News Limited's The Punch website. Bolton has been blocked from Rann's Twitter feed, he says, after making a comment about the Premier being a Port Adelaide fan who jumped on the Adelaide Crows bandwagon when Port didn't make the AFL finals. Bolton notes that in a previous article for The Punch Rann wrote: "I guess I could vet those who follow me on Twitter, but that would be like employing a bouncer or a censor at my street corner meetings." So, feedback is OK unless it involves your movable football affiliation.

Way out there

ASTRONOMERS on top of a mountain in Hawaii have found another planetoid, or plutoid, spinning in the farthest regions of the solar system. Named Haumea, the dwarf planet is a companion of Pluto, the former planet downgraded in 2006, and Eris and Makemake. The last sounds like a Japanese name. Which makes us wonder whether Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of Japan's new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has been there. She's been to Venus, she says, travelling in a UFO. "It was an extremely beautiful place and was very green," Miyuki says. What would scientists know? They say the average temperature on Venus is 461C and the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide with generous amounts of sulphuric acid. If you could see through the UFO's window, a hellish yellow would pervade the volcanic landscape.

Don't upset the aliens

MEANWHILE, back on planet South Australia, UFOSA has written to the state Planning and Local Government Department pleading for a halt to BHP Billiton's Olympic Dam uranium mining expansion. UFOSA's otherwise reasonably rational argument is bolstered by an attachment claiming that uranium mining can lead to "intervention by alien UFO intelligences", which could lead to a "possible extinction of people as a species".

Repent, ye capitalists

AUSTRALIAN archbishops have been strangely quiet in the past few months, but in Britain it's hard to silence the meddlesome Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who regularly dispenses bones of contention. Williams thinks British financiers haven't been sufficiently repentant for their part in blowing up the global economy and that there is "diffused resentment" over the business community's failure to accept its share of responsibility for the crisis. "There hasn't been what I would, as a Christian, call repentance. We haven't heard people saying, 'Well, actually, no, we got it wrong and the whole fundamental principle on which we worked was unreal, was empty."' Moreover, there is a sense of "bafflement" and "muted anger" at the bonus culture, he says.

No meat pies, please

OUR consul-general in Los Angeles, Chris De Cure, hosts Australian Emmy nominees Simon Baker (The Mentalist), Rose Byrne (Damages) and Toni Collette (United States of Tara) at the weekend. Three other nominees are Battlestar Galactica director Michael Rymer, the effects people Hoodlum for Lost and Scott Hicks's documentary on Philip Glass. Coopers beer will be served. We hope the food is an improvement on the meat pies the American Australian Association served when welcoming De Cure.