Overheard at a dinner between senior Queensland Labor staffers discussing leadership options should Anna Bligh fall over: “If Langbroek gets in, we’ll be out of office for a million years”.

Pig brother is watching you. This was Michael Danby speaking on Radio National’s PM last night in support of Rebiya Kadeer’s visit to Melbourne, criticising the Chinese government’s attempt to prevent her visit: “The communist authorities in Beijing should understand that nearly every educated person has read George Orwell’s 1984, and are impervious to their zany totalitarian logic. People are not sheep that will simply shout ‘four legs good, two legs bad’, as do the sheep in that novel.”

It’s always good for our MPs to help by pointing out how close they come to being “educated”.

The steady descent of SBS TV into commercialism continues. Now all ad breaks are broadcast at noticeably higher volumes than the programs — the technique used by “real” TV stations for years. The ABC seems up to the same prank — but more inconsistent and not quite so loud. Maybe nobody notices or cares. More evidence of decline.

Is Telstra up to its old tricks again? After sending Strathfield and numerous smaller mobile dealers to the wall and trying very hard do the same to Crazy John, it appears that they are applying the screws to Fone Zone, their largest dealer.