Whizz bang went the physicists | Wednesday, June 07, 2006 |
Presumably Jack Straw when in a ministerial position in the UK cabinet must have done a decent enough job to have justified his tenure. Maybe he had good ideas, perhaps he wrote some of them down.
The one thing that I don't think he ever quite managed to get to grips with was language. Particularly when he was foreign secretary his lack of polish was frequently eye-watering.
Here, John Howard is probably better at delivery but a bit short on thought about the terms he uses.
As in the UK, there is currently a debate raging on wether or not Australia should change its stance on Nuclear power and so the Prime Minister is in the process of announcing an inquiry into the matter. This itself is a somewhat curious affair because he's said it's going to happen, but only released a subset of the names of the committee members and the whole thing appears to be being dragged out.
One such committee name was that of a nuclear physicist (who by some strange chance also happens to have been CEOs of Telstra and Optus, and the Chairman/MD of Kodak Australasia) and naturally enough, the neigh-sayers about the whole project are outraged that someone so clearly biased and an obvious government yes man should be given a position.
The don't seem to have realised that nuclear physicists are probably a useful source of information when discussing reactors, enrichment and reprocessing. He was quoted as saying
I didn't hear that quote. I did hear him say something about "whizz bang nuclear physicists" though, and that made me smile.
That's kind of un-polished terminology, but particularly in the context of nuclear power stations - the one thing we certainly don't want whizzing or banging.
The one thing that I don't think he ever quite managed to get to grips with was language. Particularly when he was foreign secretary his lack of polish was frequently eye-watering.
Here, John Howard is probably better at delivery but a bit short on thought about the terms he uses.
As in the UK, there is currently a debate raging on wether or not Australia should change its stance on Nuclear power and so the Prime Minister is in the process of announcing an inquiry into the matter. This itself is a somewhat curious affair because he's said it's going to happen, but only released a subset of the names of the committee members and the whole thing appears to be being dragged out.
One such committee name was that of a nuclear physicist (who by some strange chance also happens to have been CEOs of Telstra and Optus, and the Chairman/MD of Kodak Australasia) and naturally enough, the neigh-sayers about the whole project are outraged that someone so clearly biased and an obvious government yes man should be given a position.
The don't seem to have realised that nuclear physicists are probably a useful source of information when discussing reactors, enrichment and reprocessing. He was quoted as saying
"Two are nuclear physicists; I would hardly appoint an urban planner to chair the inquiry; I would hardly appoint a social worker to chair the inquiry"
I didn't hear that quote. I did hear him say something about "whizz bang nuclear physicists" though, and that made me smile.
That's kind of un-polished terminology, but particularly in the context of nuclear power stations - the one thing we certainly don't want whizzing or banging.
