Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Pansy Wong’s journey

To nobody’s great surprise, Pansy Wong, National MP for Botany, has announced her resignation:
It is also time for me to turn a new page in my life’s journey to focus on personal and family priorities.
Reflecting on the past year, as one fruitlessly does about this time, I think my main achievement has been that I have never once uttered the word “journey”.

Monitor: Home Paddock

12 comments:

Peter Cresswell said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Peter Cresswell said...

Nor "new page."

One hopes.

Rob Hosking said...

Have you been reading Auberon Waugh????

Your final sentence shows an influence, I feel.

bk drinkwater said...

I've always felt that the only thing better than a sentence containing a trite metaphor is a sentence containing *two* trite metaphors.

"new page in my life’s journey" — if Hon Pansy Wong's conduct had been insufficient to warrant resignation, then those six words...

Stephen Stratford said...

PC: one does indeed.

Rob: that is the nicest thing anyone has said to me this year. Bron Waugh is a hero of mine to the extent that I have the Spitting Image poster of him on my office wall(it belongs to Chris Slane, really, but he seems to have forgotten). I have all his books except the one that I foolishly loaned to someone, "Biafra: Britain's Shame", written with Suzanne Cronje, which is a heart-rending account of the Nigerian civil war and England's role in it under the Harold Wilson government. I loaned someone else his brilliant book on the Jeremy Thorpe trial, "The Last Word". He is remembered as a satirist but he was a formidable journalist. And, friends who met him all say, a very nice man.

BK: exactly. She didn't commit "going forward" but it must have been a close-run thing.

Fergus said...

Changing the subject, this is a sentence from the Herald's review of the Fall concert: "He is one of music's most unique specimens - both in mind, music and voice."

Stephen Stratford said...

The Herald's standards have been falling (geddit?) for years. That is a splendid specimen though sadly not unique.

Anonymous said...

But it's more unique than some of the other examples.

Anonymous said...

Not as unique as Stephen Stratford. I heard he blows goats.

Stephanovic said...

How can you "turn a new page" on a "journey"? This is a mixed and muddled metaphor as well as possibly being against traffic regulations... At least she didn't use the irritating expression "eyewatering" which has come into vogue. I'm going to give up, make myself a nice cup of tea and watch the cricket...

Stephanie said...

Please don't watch the cricket - you'll be so disappointed you may utter a mixed and muddled metaphor.

Stephen Stratford said...

Anonymous at 1:31AM, I confess to having eaten a goat, in the form of a horrible stew served up in the kitchen of James K Baxter's horrible commune at Jerusalem in 1971, but I have never blown one. Not that I recall - but it is the sort of thing one would remember, I feel.

Stephanovic: agreed - there is far too much eyewatering these days.

Stephanie: cricket is inherently disappointing.