They’re certainly a strange breed in the Liberal Party’s outer-east of Melbourne. Take federal member for La Trobe Jason Wood (yes, Jason of modified orgasm fame). If you view the YouTube video of Jason’s famous speech one could be excused thinking he was nervous, tipsy or a bit of both. But Jason has recently made presentations at local schools and had trouble pronouncing the kids names (even the Anglo Saxon ones). One teacher said to me: “I was not even certain what he was talking about, so I doubt the kids could comprehend him.”

But what takes the cake is the Liberal candidate for the state seat of Gembrook, Brad Batten. Gembrook is held slenderly by Labor and is one seat they need to take if they expect to win the state election in November. Well Brad has a brand new webpage — full of grammatical errors — where he waxes lyrical on tourist hotspots like Emerald. When you click on Emerald it’s linked to the site of the Emerald Show — in Queensland, not Victoria.

What’s the story with The Canberra Times? Another week, another going away do. The exodus of reporters over the last few months has been so enthusiastic that the newsroom is referred to by some as ‘The Mausoleum’ and pages and pages are now being filled with wire copy, so much so that readers may as well subscribe to AAP or The Guardian. With circulation continuing to fall, the journalists who remain there are starting to wonder if the current editor, the unpopular Rod Quinn, was actually appointed to preside over the winding down of the once respected broadsheet.

As a regular reader of the catalogue from discount chemist chain Chemist Warehouse I was disturbed to see a large “!!Stop Press!!” splash on the back page advising: “As of the 1st of May NEW LEGISLATION will prevent the sale of large packs of Analgesic products that contain codeine. These products will still be available on prescription.” Listed below are six products including panadeine and aspalgin that presumably will not be available without a prescription from May 1.

The prices are low ($2.39 for 24 mersyndol day strength caplets) and it seems that Chemist Warehouse are clearly encouraging people to stock up. I find this extremely disturbing as there must be a reason why these potent products will soon require a prescription. Chemists are regularly rated by the public as highly respected professionals but this ad is pushing strong pain killers as if they are cheap socks or undies.

This (rather lame) video appeared briefly on Bigpond’s official AFL website last week before disappearing and then mysteriously showing up on YouTube. Could Telstra be trying to subvert having to pay for the online rights to the music by anonymously uploading it to YouTube? The footage is obviously professional; if it wasn’t the AFL or Bigpond that published it, then who? Universal Music aren’t in two minds, though, they’re all over it. After all, someone was stupid enough to ask last week how much the music would cost. When Universal quoted the six-figure fee, the wire went dead.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwDehYcftp4[/youtube]