Welcome to the free market
"The Russian Government looks set to reject the latest pressure by Western nations to try to force it to cut its production of aluminium." — Sydney Morning Herald, January 17.
Advantage
"The most obvious advantage of outsourcing [contracting out] is that it is easier to coerce or sack external staff than it is to put pressure on internal staff." — Business Review Weekly, November 13, 1992 (we're slow readers).
Job creation program
"Answering an opposition question on notice, the federal government revealed that $740,000 was spent canvassing support for the head of the Department of Primary Industries and Energy, Geoff Miller, to become director of the Rome-based [United Nations] Food and Agriculture Organisation." — Bulletin, January 25.
Except from the Pentagon?
"I wouldn't say Hawaii is in serious danger right now." — US President Bill Clinton during a live television interview, trying to calm a caller alarmed by US propaganda about North Korea's supposed nuclear weapons.
Captain of industry
Western Mining Corporation chief and reactionary social commentator, the Bible-bashing Hugh Morgan, should be sacked, according to the editorial writer for the Financial Review, following a ruling on January 19 by a Canadian judge that WMC had engaged in a conspiracy to harm the directors of a small Canadian company after WMC had, through its own fault, paid $60 million over the top for the company. The Review notes another unlawful episode laid at Morgan's door: "In September it was revealed that the company's exploration teams had trespassed on the leases of another company and withheld vital information when negotiating to buy those leases."
Heredity
"Everyone has got problems, and the monarchy has survived all sorts of things. This in and out of one another's beds has been going on for a thousand years. I think the important thing is that the monarchy is hereditary." — Victorian RSL president Bruce Ruxton, Australia's answer to Dan Quayle, defending the monarchy.