ABC – that’s the Australian version of the BBC, and ‘wanker’ translates into Brit English as ‘tosser’.
I was watching Breakfast News this morning, all about Egypt.
- I will forgive the ABC for claiming it’s a ‘live’ program. Here in Queensland we watch on an hour’s delay because of the time zone difference with NSW, where the program originates. Fair enough.
- I will even forgive the ABC for claiming that “the pictures you are watching are ‘live’ from an Al Jazeera feed”, when actually they were playing a short recorded clip of about one minute’s duration, repeated on an endless loop. Journalistic licence.
The studio presenters were talking directly to “our man in Cairo” – a bloke called Mark Willacy – who was out on the streets describing the scene following Mubarak’s latest speech. He said, “… where I am standing now there is a senior military officer attempting to explain something to a large crowd who are surrounding him, asking questions. Of course, I can’t tell you what he’s saying because as you’d expect, I don’t speak much Arabic …”
The correspondent doesn’t speak the language of the country he’s been sent to at taxpayers’ expense? So what the hell is he doing there? In the old days, the whole point of a “foreign correspondent” was that he spoke the language, wherever he was sent, better than the natives and could ferret out all the interesting bits of news that the local authorities probably wouldn’t tell him. But here we have some guy living the good life on expenses, paid for out of my pocket, and he doesn’t speak the language. Or even think that he ought to be able to.
This wanker (tosser) should be brought home immediately and set to work clearing up the cyclone and flood devastation in Queensland, living in a tent in the bush. The ABC needs a shake-up!
Boadicea's Chariot 
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