PS-sssst! can always tell when it’s a pandemic, epidemic, polemic, or plain old anaemic week as its usually creative readership bypasses their provocative plays on words and paronomasia in favour of publishing publications properly.
And this week is a classic example.
Please pardon the puny pick of puns, pranks and parodies in today’s program as the providers of prevalent perspicacity have gone pro tem.
Amen!
Staying alerrrrrrt!
Thankfully, at least one corner of the PS tried their hand at clever creativity during the week, and as a result, was swooped on by the power-that-bes who pen PS-sssst!
NSW’s conveniently onomatopoeical Police Force managed to fill the gap, unveiling its adoption of a new world-class training program to upskill officers to deal with armed offenders on the loose and, presumably, protect the community it serves.
“Police will receive specialist training to deal with armed offenders in a number of different scenarios, ranging from domestic violence to counter terrorism incidents,” the police’s publicity proudly pronounced.
It also revealed that the new program had been imported and was based on a course used by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).
The program turns out to be the FBI’s ‘Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training’, which keen anagrammers will recognise reduces to ALERRT!
While that is probably close enough for spelling in the US, to the rest of the world (including us!) it raises the possibility that the program was created by Kermit the Frrrog!
Dis-impact-able
Digging back in time now to find another dig-worthy contribution to comment on, we find ourselves scratching our head over a welcome announcement by the ACT Government that a bushfire-affected stretch of bushland had been cleared, cleaned and reclaimed for public use, which was to be a source of drinkable water for the National Capital.
The Minister pushing the publicity generously recognised the workers who had completed the job.
“Local contractors and Canberrans helped undertake critical catchment restoration works to better protect Canberra’s water supply,” the Minister declared politely.
“Sediment and debris in parks and reserves can make its way into our waterways impacting our water quality,” he added, prompting the ever pedantic PS-sssst! to wonder how one goes about ‘impacting’ water quality.
Having an impact on water quality would seem to qualify as English in PS-sssst!’s didactic dictionary as the same dictionary defines ‘impact’ as a verb meaning to ‘stamp or impress’ and one would think it pretty hard to go stamping or impressing water, let alone stamping or impressing its quality!
Like all verbs however ‘impact’ it can be adjectivised so that the water quality can become ‘impacted’ but even then it would need another step to do so, as it would need to be impacted upon.
PS-sssst! wonders if the Minister might have been more accurate to accuse the sediment and debris of ‘impacting on’ our water quality.
As always, the thoughts of our thoughtful readers are of interest to pedantic PS-sssst! with fabulous prizes for clever commentary on offer. Send thoughts to [email protected].
The rules of giveaway
To Rama Gaind’s weekly prize frenzy now in which lucky readers from all over Australia (and the world) had the chance to become winners and take home a free best-selling book simply by answering one of Rama’s super simple quiz questions, no questions asked.
For her super prize this week, Rama offered two copies of Fiona Robertson’s highly acclaimed culture-bending book Rules of Belonging which makes coming to work that much easier.
Two lucky readers who swooped onto Rama’s review found that the rule of ‘belonging’ could be reconstructed to produce an ‘organisational’ culture it would ‘delight our people and turbo-charge our results’.
They were Kathy M from the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), and Katy Z from Services Australia.
Heartiest congratulations to Kathy and Katy and thanks to all who took part. The new books will be on their way shortly.
In the meantime give Rama’s current giveaways a cheerful checkout and try to become another PS News winner. This week she has a book giveaway of What’s Your Plan? at this PS News link and an equally exciting DVD titled The Postcard Killings at this equally exciting PS News link.
Good luck to everyone who takes their chance!
In Future we trust
And finally, a plea from the heart.
Most PS News readers will be aware of the sad state of Australia’s media industry these days with hundreds of newspapers, news bulletins, news sources and other news outlets making news themselves as the irresistible reality of economics sends them to that ‘last page’ of publication, seeing them folding to be no more.
Be it known that PS News is a member of the Australian media industry and as such could face the same fate if you and your many thousands of co-readers don’t continue to read it.
So, as one of our cherished readers, our plea to you is that you keep opening and reading our stories, that you share them with your workmates and colleagues, that you keep visiting and learning from our feature articles, keep laughing at our cartoons and the occasional nonsense in PS-sssst! and keep treating PS News as YOUR source of information about YOUR public service.
While no-one can guarantee the future, PS News’s policy of putting service ahead of profit has seen it thrive as one of the better-managed media outlets in the nation and we have every intention of keeping up that good work.
It should be a feather in all our hats that the management skills that have carried PS News this far had their source in the editor’s 20 years inside the public service and that the vast majority of today’s PS News journalists, writers, managers and contributors are ex- or current public servants, motivated by their personal commitments to see the public sector thrive.
And, of course, no-one can complain about its cover price!
Till next week….
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