This site
way2bet.com.au/odds_comparison…
shows a continuously updated record of the various bookies’ odds.

Here is way2bet’s assessment of the situation as at 20 May.

way2bet.com.au/news/article/au…

Sportingbet Australia CEO Michael Sullivan said punters were reacting to the polls and continuing to back Labor who have shortened again today to be a clear $1.80 favourite with the Coalition drifting to $1.95.

“We simply can’t ignore these polls. We were happy to play it safe with the Government until the budget rolled out but the punters continue to pour the money on Mr. Rudd and the ALP,” said Mr Sullivan.

“In the past two elections, the ALP has looked good in the polls but the punting money simply didn’t arrive.”

“This year the punters just can’t get enough of the ALP and the budget has not dented their confidence at all”.

Long delay on your post but, Howard’s classic statement about interest rates in 2004 was “Interest rates will always be lower under a coalition government than they will under a Labor government”. This statement was first made on the 30th of August 2004, on the radio national AM program with Catherine McGrath.

As I heard the sound bite in the loungeroom that night I said two things to my wife a) That is one of the shrewdest political comments I’ve ever heard an Australian politician make and b) They’ll be misquoting this one for years.

How true it has turned out to be. Latham took the worm and misconstrued the meaning as, variously:

a) There would be no rate rises
b) That interest rates would remain low under the coalition
c) That coalition governments tend to lower interest rates

None of which JWH actually said. To compound it, the ALP picked up on this in 2006 and drove a truck around with Howard and his long “lying” nose about rate rises, with Beazley claiming (this part, correctly) 8 rate rises since the 2004 election. Actually, this campaign was the lie and the ALP was absolutely aware of what was actually said.

The reason that this is a beautiful piece of politics is:
a) You don’t have to define what “low” means
b) You can’t have parallel realities.. we didn’t have a Labor government at the same time, so we’ll never know how they would have been different
c) It plays into both fear and mistrust of Labor governments with people’s mortgages, the biggest debt they carry and the primary reason they go to work.

Great piece of politics that he may still be paying for but we’ll never really know whether this statement was the one that got him over the line for a fourth term!

The ‘ in words replaces the “e” in the “es” which used to be there to indicate the possessive. I don’t know who first dropped the “e” and how it became acceptable to do so, but somebody did. Wednesday is Woden’s day. We’ve kept the “e” in the spelling, but we do not bother pronouncing all the syllables any more. I guess in time dropping “ly” from adverbs, as in “he did brilliant”, will become acceptable.

I accepted American spellings such as “color” from students. After all, in this case, the American spelling is the original, the “u” being added to English to be more like the French.

As for the political implications, there are possibly none in these examples, but the word “reform’ is the most misused in the English language, and “Choices” (always a lie) has gone from “WorkChoices”. Labor is in on the act too with its decision to replace the neutral term “Industrial Relations Commission” with “FairWorkAustralia”. Who first decided it was okay not to leave gaps between words? I’d hazard a guess that it was someone from computing, not Apple though.

I have noticed that on many US TV shows, people say phrases such as “You did brilliant”, or “You did good” instead of “You did brilliantly”, or “You did well”. I don’t know if this is a recent phenomenon, but if it is, language in the US is changing before our eyes. It’s very interesting! Does anyone know how this change was initiated?

Every word ever used was once used by someone for the first time. I suspect “majorly” arrived in Australia in Clueless, but that is only a guess. Because I was a teacher, I was able to keep up with some changes in expression and thus able to enlighten those who had no idea what The Speaker was saying when he posted “my bad” instead of “I’m sorry”. Adding “ly” to “major” is not bad grammar at all – it is rather the application of the normal rule for making adverbs to an adjective that had not in the past been formed into an adverb. It is an example of Valleyspeak (a word I just made up – some will get the meaning, while others will not). Thus language progresses.

The choice of “TooBee” as a screen name seems to be a play on the verb, “to be”, as in Shakespeare’s “To be, or not to be – that is the question”. The teacher’s version is “2B, or not 2B. Oh no! I have got 2B.”

About 25 years ago, students started to refer in their work to authors of letters to the editor and the like by their what were then called Christian names. I would always correct this undue degree of familiarity, yet here we are today as people who have never met addressing each other by what are now called first or given name). I saw a transcript of an interview of Malcolm Fraser by Virginia Trioli. She called him “Malcolm”. (If you watched West Wing, you would have heard that most of the script was “Yes, Mr President”, “No, Mr President”, “Thank you, Mr President” even when the president should have been doing the thanking. Even the vice president told someone off for using his name instead of calling him “Mr Vice President”. In fact in the final of the series, the new president kept getting addressed as “Mr President-Elect” before his inauguration. It’s worse than royalty.)

We all make mistakes in spelling, grammar and punctuation. I do not pick people up on them, except for teacher-bashers who had better be perfect in the spelling, grammar and punctuation of their own invective. I was certainly not having a go at you, because you in fact made no mistake.

I do, however, think it is disrespectful of other posters if anyone doe not make the effort to use correct English, and the “I was typing quickly” excuse does not wash with me. (The use of a quotation as an adjective, as I have just done, is not part of the English I was taught, yet it seems perfectly understandable and I accept it as grammatically correct.)

Language changes. It’s hard to know when new words and ways of expression pass from unacceptable to acceptable.

AFAICS IMNSHO, the use of txt detracts from clear meaning.

Maybe it was ironic, but I wouldn’t have noticed it because people in the past have complained about that perfectly seriously.

I don’t think Howard can do it for if the Liberal heartland is angry then there little hope, remember if you can’t keep the heartland, what chance do you have.

Rudd needs to keep on message, yes he might be seen as nerdy, but the Liberal heartland likes a person to be smart and considered.

The Economy is the only ace going right for the Liberals at present, so while there daylight there is hope, but the Sun is fast setting.