Sucking up expensive piss

I’VE been away; hence the absence of gabfest from this website for a few months.

But it’s OK, I’ve been on the job.

What job is that, I hear you ask. Well, it was a very important job for this state. It involved a great deal of research, a great deal of networking, a great deal of travel and a great deal of sucking up expensive piss.

No, I’m not a travel journalist, although the editor of this website has, for some reason, chosen to describe me as a “media professional”.

I actually run a large corporation and control an annual revenue in the billions.

But that didn’t deter me: when the urge to follow the Alpine slalom season first-hand comes upon you, you just have to go.

And, as the event had clear relevance to our core business, my deputy came along too.

Some of the shareholders carped a bit about us being out of the state for so long. We run a pretty tight ship and managerial resources were somewhat stretched in our absence. (It was the busiest end of the year for the company.)

But you can’t expect us to get a firm handle on the complexities of the slalom circuit in a day.

It took us five days in each location on the circuit to talk to the people we needed to talk to, sound out the possibilities of involving our company in the sport, see the competitors in action and check out the regional variations of liebefraumilch.

Although my deputy is, nominally, in charge of our sports sponsorship program, I felt my presence was essential to affirm the seriousness of our interest in slalom.

I would like to reassure shareholders that the bulk of our expenses on the trip were defrayed thanks to the generosity of Swiss bookmakers. (And you thought they only made watches and chocolate.)

GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

EARTH to motherhood statement:

Tasmania’s leading newspaper has recognised the main lethal threat in our otherwise placid state: the maiming and killing caused by dangerous driving.

The Mercury has taken the very courageous step of running a year-long campaign to promote safer driving, entitled, um, Drivesafe.

Just because if you did a survey and asked people whether they agreed that our roads should be safer, 99.9 per cent of them would say yes, it doesn’t mean that it’s not worth reinforcing that belief over and over again.

The modern media can only retain its relevance if it keeps telling people what they already think and know.