Richard Farmer’s chunky bits: world’s worst book title?

The blame game. I have been writing about the potential of hospital funding being a vote loser for Labor for many months now and so it is coming to pass. The blame game between federal and state governments is just warming up.

Another day, another way. The fallout from that silly decision to allow the formal agreement with the Greens to end becomes more apparent every day. The latest potential casualty? Gonski education reform funding. At this rate there will not be much governing between now and campaigning time.

The tabloids disappoint. Goodness me, the tabloids are running dead. Hardly a leadership story to be seen this morning. Holding their fire for next week’s Newspoll I expect.

Still, the ABC is not disappointing. Another easy victory for the ABC in Chunky Bits Daily Leadership Beat-Up Award with a fine lead item on last night’s 7pm news featuring a language warning and Paul Howes.

And that provided an excellent lead in for this item on the 24-hour news service this morning:

Lesser of two evils. The Prime Minister must be wondering which is worse: privately gossiping Caucus members or publicly defending union officials?

The impact on her chances has been considerable. The market now puts a 63% probability on Julia Gillard losing her job before election day.

Who is the really, really, real VIP? The cult of celebrity is overdone, wrote my editor introducing yesterday’s celebrity issue of Crikey. A sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with but, dare I write it, I prefer a musical version of the sentiment.

Who is the really really real VIP
The one the trail the most conquering kin
Who looks around at everything
And sees exactly what we’ve been
He is the face that never was nor will be kissed
Do we think we’ll be down on his guest list
When were standing at the gates
After being fashionably late
There’ll be no make up and there’ll be no film crews
No Vuitton bags and no Manolo shoes
When he’s presiding over you
Asking you did you love only you
Or did you stand for something else
Besides the hankering for fame and fame itself
The one who always was and always is
Will show you what a real VIP is

On the short list. Queensland’s Sunshine Coast author Loani Prior has made the short list for a book competition conducted by the major industry trade journal The Bookseller.

How Tea Cosies Changed the World will be up against Lofts of North America: Pigeon Lofts, God’s Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis, How to Sharpen Pencils, Was Hitler Ill and Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop.

Previous winners of the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year include Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers, How to Avoid Huge Ships, Living with Crazy Buttocks and, most recently, Cooking with Poo. Another previous winner, A Short History of Tractors reportedly has so far sold a million copies despite being written in Ukrainian.

News and views noted along the way.

• The euro crisis gnaws at Europe’s underbelly — “The euro crisis may have dropped out of the headlines recently, but Spain and Italy would seem to be doing their best to bring it back.”
• Friends in low places: where the real lobbying happens — “Washington today resembles something like the end of “Animal Farm.” People move from one side of the table to the other and up and down the Acela corridor with ease. An outsider looking at a negotiating table would glance from lobbyist to staff member, from colleague to former colleague, from pig to man and from man to pig and find it impossible to say which is which.”
• The battle within — “With politics stuck in pre-election pirouettes, death tolls rise. Absent a consensus among national leaders, or hard political choices, internal violence is killing Pakistan from within.”
• Falsely shouting fire in a theater: how a forgotten labor struggle became a national obsession and emblem of our constitutional faith