Slattsnews

To this list of ugly terms, I’ll add “partner” (as bedmate), “inappropriate”, “impact” as a verb, “differently abled”, “misogynist” in its Macquarie revisionist form and “discriminate” as a negative force; if the human race hadn’t discriminated against poisons, physically dangerous situations and murderous bastards, we’d have not lasted five minutes out of the trees.

IF exasperated word nerds ruled, “bucket lists” would be banned, “trending” topics on Twitter would be trashed, and so-called “superfoods” would simply be food.

Professor Bunyip delivers a toe crusher to those who whore their cultural responsibility for temporary – and believe me, it’s temporary – political favouritism.

English, our wonderful tongue, is forever changing, and not only when the board of the Macquarie Dictionary convenes an emergency meeting to justify the abuse of a decent man by a slattern who helped steal the funeral funds of miners’ widows and waifs.

Readers feel free to nominate terms you’d like to see purged from modern usage.

We saw the New Year in at picturesque Port Fairy, home of brilliant photographer James Pevitt.

This letter to The Australian shows just how dire is the US’s financial situation:

WHILE watching our Australian superannuation and other investments deteriorate in value in large part due to the US fiscal cliff deadlock, it is illustrative to look at the US government budget as if it were a household budget.
By taking eight zeros — yes eight — off the US tax receipts, commitments, debt level and planned reduction in government spending, we get the following if the country were a family last year:
Household income $21,700; spent $38,200; new debt on the plastic cards $16,500; balance on credit cards $142,710; actual cutback in spending $38.50. So should we still be wondering why so many in the US government ranks of both Democrats and Republicans want to put the brakes on the President’s plans?
Andre Lewis, Capalaba, Qld