No way, mate!
Officials at Australia's Parliament House yesterday overturned a day-old ban on guards and attendants using the word "mate" to address lawmakers and visitors after the new rule sparked outrage among prime ministers past and present.
`Rampant pomposity'
The U-turn came after Australian Prime Minister John Howard said it was "absurd" to require security guards at the country's Parliament House to stop addressing visitors and lawmakers as "mate."
One of Howard's predecessors called the ban "rampant pomposity."
On Thursday, guards and attendants at the building in Canberra were told to stop using the common Australian expression of endearment following a complaint from a senior civil servant, media reports said.
Impractical, absurd
"These things are all a matter of context, and that's why it's impractical and absurd to try and ban something," Howard, who in the past has used the term to describe US President George W. Bush, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
"There are circumstances where a more formal address is appropriate," he said.
"But in the same conversation you might start off calling somebody you've just met `sir' or `madam,' but as you become more familiar with your conversation and your exchange, you might end up saying `mate,'" he added.
Hilary Penfold, who is the secretary for the Department of Parliamentary Services, said that the ban was intended to ensure that staff do not offend visitors.
Term of endearment
But Howard said that it was not necessary, adding that even he often uses the term of endearment with people he barely knows.
"People will ring me up and I might start off saying `yes sir' as a matter of courtesy, which I normally do, and then we lapse into it, we might say `mate,'" Howard said.
Former Labor Party prime minister Bob Hawke was enraged by the ban.
"It's pomposity gone mad," Hawke told ABC radio.
Hawke, who is a former union leader famous for his down to earth approach and for holding a beer drinking record while studying at Oxford University, said that in the past the term had been useful to him at official functions.
Reasonable respect
"It gets you out of all sorts of embarrassing situations," he said.
"It's got a nice neutrality about it. I mean, it doesn't imply any intimacy, it shows a reasonable level of respect." I think it's one of our great words," Hawke added.
By yesterday afternoon, staff had been issued fresh written instructions.
In the future, they were cautioned to "be aware when a degree of informality may be acceptable and when a more formal approach is required and not use colloquialisms where these might not be understood or appreciated."
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
RSS