- The Guardian
- Issue #2114
Cumbersome
Non-weaselly, this word means something is hard to carry, like an extra-large phone that could destroy a pocket, or a sofa that’s a nightmare to move into the house. The weasel use of this word is to mean any regulation someone doesn’t want to comply with. In a shock move, the ALP has passed some legislation that makes life a bit better for workers (right to disconnect, legislation to prevent casualisation). Business finds going along with the new laws ‘cumbersome,’ we find business whinging massively unsurprising.
Shackles
This word conjures up an image of large chains tied around some poor person’s hands or legs. So cruel! This week, it’s been used to try to make us feel sorry for the building industry.
Building employers have it tough. All they want to do is employ construction workers for as little money as they can get away with paying, with as little care for safety as is legally possible, for maximum profit. Their hands are shackled in this noble task by the CFMEU, but a Labor government is un-shackling them, so we can all look forward to more exploitation, less safety and higher profits for developers.
Freedom
One of those weasel words that always sounds nice, ‘freedom’ achieves weasel status through being vague. Conditions always apply. Freedom for whom? Freedom from what? Where?
In a speech at the US Democratic Party Convention that is being reported as though it’s the Second Coming, Kamala Harris has said that the US stands for “Freedom, and dignity”.
This will come as news to the people of Gaza, and the West Bank who don’t have a lot of either, not to mention the citizens of Egypt whose military dictatorship Harris will keep propping up if she gets to be President.
The US does stand for freedom in the sense that they love talking about it, but conditions always apply.
The National Interest
The Australian Financial Review is a solidly pro-big business paper, and along with its Nine stablemates The Age, and The Sydney Morning Herald, has been very keen on smearing the CFMEU. Political editor Phillip Coorey is enthusiastic about the ALP government “working with” the Liberal-National Coalition on making the CFMEU legislation even more draconian (see recent Guardians). Coorey says this cooperation is “in the national interest.” If it’s in the national interest to have a totally unaccountable bureaucrat take over a democratically run union and spend members money anyway he feels like while being exempt from the law, Coorey must live in a different nation to the rest of us.
Plant food
This is one of those phrases which is true as far as it goes, but which is almost always used for weaselly purposes. Yes, you could call carbon dioxide ‘plant food,’ and climate change denialist and former chief of the Australian Nuclear Science Technology Organisation (ANSTO) Adi Paterson has done just that, ticking off Australians worried about climate change for having an “irrational fear” of carbon dioxide.
Increased CO2 in the atmosphere has been linked to the most severe fires in Australian history, during which three of our major cities had hazardous air quality, so we’re not sure if ‘irrational’ covers any fear we might have.
Co2 is “plant food.” Water is good for plants too, but Paterson might have a rational fear of being immersed in it.
