Peter Richardson has been a journalist on the Sunshine Coast for 50 years and is the former editor of the Nambour Chronicle. Last year he published Chapter and Verse, a collection of short fiction and verse inspired by the people and places of the Coast. Peter is now writing a memoir of a half-century of journalism in South-East Queensland.

So what if Kev swears?

July 19 | Peter Richardson

So Kevin Rudd swears. Shock, horror!

I’m bemused, not by the report that he uses the F-word, but by the fact that this astonishing disclosure made nationwide headlines.

This breathless reportage was just one more chapter in the flood of trivial drivel about the F-word that has engrossed the media lately.

Do we really expect that our politicians’ non-public personas be as pure as the driven snow?

We might just as well believe that none of the journalists who report on the MPs’ doings would ever pepper their own in-house conversations with the word in question.

Maybe the associate professor of controversy (sorry, politics) who revealed the awful truth will benefit from a few extra book sales, and the PM could even pick up an ocker point or two in the polls, but other than that, what’s to say but ho-hum?

As for the F-word itself, that’s all it is … a word; and whether its use is offensive depends on the intent of the user and the sensibilities of the reader/hearer.

It is now almost as unremarkable in conversation as ‘bloody’, and more recently, ‘bugger’, and it has long lost much of its power to shock.

After all, it’s been around for about 500 years, so it’s obviously a bit tired.

My venerable Shorter Oxford English Dictionary pronounced as far back as 1973 that it was “until recently regarded as a taboo word rarely recorded in print”, so the rot had already set in by then.

We still have those three cutesy dots after the initial ‘f’, but that time-honoured device aimed at avoiding offence to readers now seems pretty pointless, given the way the word is now thrown around on TV and radio and in cyberspace.

Perhaps we should get rid of those dots, and meanwhile, can the media please go a bit easier on the mock shock?

The Return of the Frugals, as discussed by AAT last week, is gathering momentum as the need for belt-tightening becomes more apparent.

Namour herb nursery proprietor and widely read author Isabell Shippard, who agrees with AAT that we are in for changes in many facets of our lives, has almost completed her third book, this time on self-sufficiency and survival.

Watch for it in November, and meanwhile, why not make a start on that vege garden?